Scattered regulatory regions of the chicken Immunoglobulin-β gene and two adjacent promoters of ubiquitously expressed genes interact with the immunoglobulin-β promoter in DT40 cells

Abstract

Recent studies indicate that several transcription units assemble to form a 'transcription factory' where active transcription occurs in the nuclei. Previously, we generated chicken B-lymphocyte-derived DT40 cells lacking six transcriptional regulatory regions scattered in and around the immunoglobulin (Ig)-β gene. The deletions caused a complete shut down of transcription and epigenetic regulation of the Ig-β gene, demonstrating that the scattered regulatory regions cooperated in the transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of the gene. However, the in vivo 3-dimensional spatial relationships between the Ig-β promoter and these six regulatory regions were not investigated. In this study, we used chromosome conformation capture (3C) technology and demonstrated that the Ig-β promoter physically interacted with the scattered regulatory regions. We found that the Ig-β promoter also interacted with two downstream promoters of ubiquitously expressed genes, rad motif 1 (RDM1) and Plekhm1, to form a transcription factory, but not with three ubiquitously expressed genes, BAF60b, p45/SUG, and RRMJ3, located upstream of the Ig-β gene. In this factory, the chromatin from the three promoters and the scattered regulatory regions of the Ig-β gene formed a complex structure with many chromatin loops. © 2011 Pharmaceutical Society of Japan.