The DNMT1 associated lncRNA Dali is an epigenetic regulator of neural differentiation [4]

Many intergenic long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) loci regulate the expression of adjacent protein coding genes. Less clear is whether intergenic lncRNAs commonly regulate transcription by modulating chromatin at genomically distant loci. Here, we report both genomically local and distal RNA-dependent roles of Dali, a conserved central nervous system expressed intergenic lncRNA. Dali is transcribed downstream of the Pou3f3 transcription factor gene and its depletion disrupts the differentiation of neuroblastoma cells. Locally, Dali transcript regulates transcription of the Pou3f3 locus. Distally, it preferentially targets active promoters and regulates expression of neural differentiation genes, in part through physical association with the POU3F3 protein. Dali interacts with the DNMT1 DNA methyltransferase in mouse and human and regulates DNA methylation status of CpG island-associated promoters in trans. These results demonstrate, for the first time, that a single intergenic lncRNA controls the activity and methylation of genomically distal regulatory elements to modulate large-scale transcriptional programmes. The genome-wide binding profile of Dali was determined using Capture Hybridisation Analysis of RNA Targets (CHART)-Seq technique (Simon et al, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 108: 20497-20502, 2011) in N2A cells. Following the CHART-seq protocol, we used RNase H elution to recover genomic DNA associated with endogenous Dali transcripts. We identified Dali binding sites in comparison both to an input DNA sample from N2A cells and to DNA recovered using the control E.coli LacZ oligonucleotide. Please note that n2a_input, n2a_LacZ data was published previously [GSE52571]