Polycomb complexes in skin epithelium development II

Polycomb group (PcG) proteins are essential epigenetic transcriptional regulators. Traditionally, PcG proteins function as two multi-subunit complexes, Polycomb repressive complex 1 (PRC1) and PRC2, which largely overlap in their genomic binding and cooperate to establish repressive chromatin domains demarcated by H2AK119ub and H3K27me3. Here, using the developing skin epidermis as a paradigm, we uncovered a functional redundancy between Polycomb complexes in the repression of unwanted non-lineage genes. Overall design: Newborn mouse epidermal progenitor cells were FACS purified. Immunoprecipitated chromatin was analyzed by ChIP-seq.

多梳蛋白家族（Polycomb group, PcG）是一类不可或缺的表观遗传转录调控因子。传统认知中，PcG蛋白以两种多亚基复合物形式发挥功能：多梳抑制复合物1（Polycomb repressive complex 1, PRC1）与PRC2，二者在基因组结合区域上高度重叠，并协同建立由H2AK119ub和H3K27me3界定的抑制性染色质结构域。本研究以发育中的皮肤表皮为研究范式，揭示了多梳复合物在抑制异常非谱系基因表达方面存在的功能冗余现象。实验整体设计：对新生小鼠表皮祖细胞进行荧光激活细胞分选（FACS）纯化，通过染色质免疫共沉淀测序（ChIP-seq）分析免疫沉淀获取的染色质。