Global gene expression analysis of Ncoa3 knockdown in mouse embryonic stem cells

Orphan nuclear receptor Esrrb is vital in maintaining ES cells and like Oct4, Sox2 and Nanog is essential for self-renewal and pluripotency. Esrrb functions in somatic cells via LBD/AF-2-dependent coactivator recruitment to target genes. Here we show that in ES cells coactivator recruitment is similarly required and identify Ncoa3 as the Esrrb coactivator needed for activation of its target genes. Ncoa3 is essential for self-renewal and the induction of pluripotency in reprogramming, and genome-wide analysis of Ncoa3 binding reveals extensive overlap with Esrrb and pluripotency factors along with marks of active genes. Mechanistically, we show Ncoa3 is specifically required to bridge RNApol2 to Esrrb. We thus identify a new member of the ES pluripotency network and describe Esrrb and Ncoa3 as key factors linking core pluripotency factors to the general transcription machinery. Three biological replicates each for control scrambled shRNA and Ncoa3 shRNA transfected E14 mouse ESCs. The global gene expression profiles of Ncoa3 knockdown cells were compared to control scrambled shRNA knockdown cells 4 days post-transfection.