EWS and FUS Bind a Subset of Transcribed Genes Encoding Proteins Enriched in RNA Regulatory Functions

Overview

Journal BMC Genomics

Publisher Biomed Central

Specialty Genetics

Date 2015 Nov 18

PMID 26573619

Citations 13

Authors

Yonglun Luo

Jenny Blechingberg

Ana Miguel Fernandes

Shengting Li

Tue Fryland

Anders D Borglum

Lars Bolund

Anders Lade Nielsen

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: FUS (TLS) and EWS (EWSR1) belong to the FET-protein family of RNA and DNA binding proteins. FUS and EWS are structurally and functionally related and participate in transcriptional regulation and RNA processing. FUS and EWS are identified in translocation generated cancer fusion proteins and involved in the human neurological diseases amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and fronto-temporal lobar degeneration.

Results: To determine the gene regulatory functions of FUS and EWS at the level of chromatin, we have performed chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by next generation sequencing (ChIP-seq). Our results show that FUS and EWS bind to a subset of actively transcribed genes, that binding often is downstream the poly(A)-signal, and that binding overlaps with RNA polymerase II. Functional examinations of selected target genes identified that FUS and EWS can regulate gene expression at different levels. Gene Ontology analyses showed that FUS and EWS target genes preferentially encode proteins involved in regulatory processes at the RNA level.

Conclusions: The presented results yield new insights into gene interactions of EWS and FUS and have identified a set of FUS and EWS target genes involved in pathways at the RNA regulatory level with potential to mediate normal and disease-associated functions of the FUS and EWS proteins.

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Johnson C, Sojitra K, Sohn E, Moreno-Romero A, Baudin A, Xu X bioRxiv. 2023; .

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