Partner: Sascha Ott


Recent publications
1.Brignall R., Cauchy P., Bevington Sarah L., Gorman B., Pisco Angela O., Bagnall J., Boddington C., Rowe W., England H., Rich K., Schmidt L., Dyer Nigel P., Travis Mark A., Ott S., Jackson Dean A., Cockerill Peter N., Paszek P., Integration of Kinase and Calcium Signaling at the Level of Chromatin Underlies Inducible Gene Activation in T Cells, JOURNAL OF IMMUNOLOGY, ISSN: 0022-1767, DOI: 10.4049/jimmunol.1602033, Vol.199, No.8, pp.2652-2667, 2017
Abstract:

TCR signaling pathways cooperate to activate the inducible transcription factors NF-κB, NFAT, and AP-1. In this study, using the calcium ionophore ionomycin and/or PMA on Jurkat T cells, we show that the gene expression program associated with activation of TCR signaling is closely related to specific chromatin landscapes. We find that calcium and kinase signaling cooperate to induce chromatin remodeling at ∼2100 chromatin regions, which demonstrate enriched binding motifs for inducible factors and correlate with target gene expression. We found that these regions typically function as inducible enhancers. Many of these elements contain composite NFAT/AP-1 sites, which typically support cooperative binding, thus further reinforcing the need for cooperation between calcium and kinase signaling in the activation of genes in T cells. In contrast, treatment with PMA or ionomycin alone induces chromatin remodeling at far fewer regions (∼600 and ∼350, respectively), which mostly represent a subset of those induced by costimulation. This suggests that the integration of TCR signaling largely occurs at the level of chromatin, which we propose plays a crucial role in regulating T cell activation.

Affiliations:
Brignall R.-other affiliation
Cauchy P.-other affiliation
Bevington Sarah L.-other affiliation
Gorman B.-other affiliation
Pisco Angela O.-other affiliation
Bagnall J.-other affiliation
Boddington C.-other affiliation
Rowe W.-other affiliation
England H.-other affiliation
Rich K.-other affiliation
Schmidt L.-other affiliation
Dyer Nigel P.-other affiliation
Travis Mark A.-other affiliation
Ott S.-other affiliation
Jackson Dean A.-other affiliation
Cockerill Peter N.-other affiliation
Paszek P.-other affiliation