Publication Date:
2009-08-07
Description:
The contribution of changes in cis-regulatory elements or trans-acting factors to interspecies differences in gene expression is not well understood. The mammalian beta-globin loci have served as a model for gene regulation during development. Transgenic mice containing the human beta-globin locus, consisting of the linked embryonic (epsilon), fetal (gamma) and adult (beta) genes, have been used as a system to investigate the temporal switch from fetal to adult haemoglobin, as occurs in humans. Here we show that the human gamma-globin (HBG) genes in these mice behave as murine embryonic globin genes, revealing a limitation of the model and demonstrating that critical differences in the trans-acting milieu have arisen during mammalian evolution. We show that the expression of BCL11A, a repressor of human gamma-globin expression identified by genome-wide association studies, differs between mouse and human. Developmental silencing of the mouse embryonic globin and human gamma-globin genes fails to occur in mice in the absence of BCL11A. Thus, BCL11A is a critical mediator of species-divergent globin switching. By comparing the ontogeny of beta-globin gene regulation in mice and humans, we have shown that alterations in the expression of a trans-acting factor constitute a critical driver of gene expression changes during evolution.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3749913/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉 〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3749913/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Sankaran, Vijay G -- Xu, Jian -- Ragoczy, Tobias -- Ippolito, Gregory C -- Walkley, Carl R -- Maika, Shanna D -- Fujiwara, Yuko -- Ito, Masafumi -- Groudine, Mark -- Bender, M A -- Tucker, Philip W -- Orkin, Stuart H -- P01 HL032262/HL/NHLBI NIH HHS/ -- Howard Hughes Medical Institute/ -- England -- Nature. 2009 Aug 27;460(7259):1093-7. doi: 10.1038/nature08243. Epub 2009 Aug 5.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Division of Hematology/Oncology, Children's Hospital Boston and Department of Pediatric Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19657335" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Carrier Proteins/genetics/*metabolism
;
Embryo, Mammalian/metabolism
;
Evolution, Molecular
;
Fetus/metabolism
;
*Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental
;
Gene Silencing
;
Globins/*genetics
;
Hematopoiesis
;
Humans
;
Mice
;
Nuclear Proteins/genetics/*metabolism
;
Species Specificity
;
beta-Globins/genetics
;
gamma-Globins/genetics
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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