Live-cell single particle tracking of PRC1 reveals a highly dynamic system with low target site occupancy

Miles K. Huseyin and Robert J. Klose ()
Additional contact information
Miles K. Huseyin: University of Oxford
Robert J. Klose: University of Oxford

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-20

Abstract: Abstract Polycomb repressive complex 1 (PRC1) is an essential chromatin-based repressor of gene transcription. How PRC1 engages with chromatin to identify its target genes and achieve gene repression remains poorly defined, representing a major hurdle to our understanding of Polycomb system function. Here, we use genome engineering and single particle tracking to dissect how PRC1 binds to chromatin in live mouse embryonic stem cells. We observe that PRC1 is highly dynamic, with only a small fraction stably interacting with chromatin. By integrating subunit-specific dynamics, chromatin binding, and abundance measurements, we discover that PRC1 exhibits low occupancy at target sites. Furthermore, we employ perturbation approaches to uncover how specific components of PRC1 define its kinetics and chromatin binding. Together, these discoveries provide a quantitative understanding of chromatin binding by PRC1 in live cells, suggesting that chromatin modification, as opposed to PRC1 complex occupancy, is central to gene repression.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21130-6 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-21130-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-21130-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().