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Correspondence to Miguel Navarro: miguel.navarro{at}ipb.csic.es
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| Introduction |
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In eukaryotic cells, RNA polymerase I (pol I) transcribes ribosomal loci (ribosomal DNA [rDNA]) and is highly compartmentalized in the nucleolus (for review see Scheer and Hock, 1999). Interestingly, in T. brucei, pol I also transcribes procyclin and VSG. Previously, we have proposed a model whereby the recruitment of a single VSG ES to a discrete pol Icontaining extranucleolar body (ES body [ESB]) defines the mechanism responsible for VSG monoallelic expression (Navarro and Gull, 2001; for review see Borst, 2002).
In this study, we investigate the nuclear localization of pol Itranscribed chromosomal sites in the context of pol I machinery and transcription activity. Our results show that the nonmutually exclusive procyclin gene family is transcribed at the nucleolus periphery in contrast to the monoallelically expressed VSG ES, which is associated with the extranucleolar ESB. Furthermore, we address the possible repositioning of bloodstream pol Itranscribed loci during differentiation to the insect procyclic form. We found that upon developmental silencing, the active VSG ES promoter is subjected to nuclear envelope repositioning concomitant with ESB disassembling and is followed by chromatin condensation.
| Results and discussion |
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Researchers have reported that heterologous genes transcribed from the procyclin locus generate mRNAs that are localized either to the nucleolus (Rudenko et al., 1991; Chung et al., 1992) or to the nucleoplasm (Chaves et al., 1998), as assessed by RNA-FISH. However, the nuclear position of the procyclin chromosomal loci has not been investigated. In this study, we address the nuclear position of the procyclin chromosomal locus, which is transcribed by pol I (Rudenko et al., 1990) and is developmentally regulated (Roditi et al., 1989). For this purpose, the lac operator repeats were chromosomally inserted upstream of a procyclin promoter within the procyclin (GPEET-PAG3) locus. First, to avoid possible fixing artifacts, the position of the procyclin locus was determined in vivo. After DAPI staining of DNA in the nucleus of live cells, the position of the nucleolus was indirectly determined by the absence of DAPI staining, and localization of the GFP-LacI bound to the procyclin locus was visualized upon GFP-LacI induction. A fluorescent GFP dot was clearly visible upon induction, and its localization was determined to be at the periphery of the nucleolus (Fig. 1 a). Live cell 3D microscopy confirmed that the procyclin locus was confined to the border of the nucleolus (Video 1, available at http://www.jcb.org/cgi/content/full/jcb.200607174/DC1). Second, to more precisely determine the position of this sequence in the nucleus with respect to the nucleolus, we performed IF analysis in PFA-fixed cells. The localization of GFP-LacI was detected using an anti-GFP monoclonal antibody, and pol I was stained using affinity-purified antipol I large subunit (anti-TbRPA1) antiserum (Navarro and Gull, 2001). Analysis of deconvolved 3D datasets indicated that the GFP-LacItagged procyclin locus is associated with the nucleolus (Fig. 1 b).
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-amanitin (100 µg/ml), which is known to inhibit pol II and III transcription. Indeed, although many transcriptional foci were distributed along the nucleus in the absence of the drug (Fig. 2 a), in the presence of
-amanitin, nascent RNA was solely detected in the nucleolus (Fig. 2 b).
Furthermore, within the nucleolus, BrUTP-labeled RNA was confined to distinct foci located predominantly in a peripheral position similar to that of the GFP-LacItagged procyclin locus (Fig. 1 a).
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To investigate a possible nuclear positiondependent regulation of pol Itranscribed chromosomal sites in the bloodstream developmental form, we first analyzed the position of the active VSG ES promoter. Double IF using an antipol I antibody and an anti-GFP antibody showed that the active VSG ES tagged with GFP-LacI localizes to the ESB as previously described (Navarro and Gull, 2001), whereas pol I was present in the ESB as well as in the nucleolus (Fig. 3 c). We also addressed the nuclear position of the internal chromosomal VSG basic copy (BC) tandem genes. These copies of different VSG genes serve as substrates for recombination events into the active ES telomere, resulting in an antigenic switch. The GFP-LacItagged VSG121 BC locus showed no association with the ESB, which is similar to an inactive 121 ES promoter region (Navarro and Gull, 2001). Importantly, statistical IF position analysis of both the BC and inactive ES promoter sequences revealed no considerable association to the nuclear envelope (2% of GFP dotpositive cells). We show that in bloodstream form, the telomeric silencing of VSG ES proposed previously (Horn and Cross, 1995) is not associated to either nuclear periphery repositioning or chromatin condensation.
We next determined whether the active VSG ES undergoes nuclear repositioning upon developmental differentiation from the bloodstream to the procyclic form, where no VSGs are expressed. For this purpose, the differentiation of bloodstream- to procyclic-form parasites was induced in vitro, and nuclear localization changes were analyzed early (5 h) or late (24 h) during differentiation. To assess the differentiation process, we monitored the developmental expression of the surface glycoprotein procyclin by double IF using antiEP procyclin and anti-VSG221 antibodies. 22% of the cells displayed procyclin on the surface 5 h upon in vitro differentiation. This value increased 24 h upon differentiation, with 83% of cells exclusively displaying procyclin on the cell surface and 5% displaying a mixed coat of procyclin and VSG. The remaining 10% of cells that solely displayed VSG on the surface can be interpreted as differentiation retarded or defective in the asynchronous differentiation process that occurs in this monomorphic cell line. 3D IF analysis showed that the active VSG ES promoter relocated to the nuclear envelope early during differentiation (5 h; Fig. 4 a). Importantly, at the same time, extranucleolar pol I (ESB) was no longer detected, which is consistent with our observation that pol I exclusively localizes to the nucleolus in the established procyclic form (Fig. 1). Statistical analysis of the position indicated that 70% of the nuclei display the GFP-LacI dot at the nuclear periphery 5 h upon differentiation (Fig. 4 c). The relocation of the active ES promoter to the nuclear periphery in 70% of the cells was higher than the number of procyclin-positive cells (22%), suggesting that VSG ES nuclear reposition silencing is preceding the full surface expression of procyclin. Finally, 24 h upon in vitro differentiation, the GFP-tagged active VSG ES promoter was located to the nuclear periphery in 88% of the cells (Fig. 4 c) displaying procyclin on their surface.
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Together, our data indicate that the active VSG ES promoter sequences reposition to the nuclear periphery concomitantly with the ES transcription silencing during differentiation to the insect form (Navarro et al., 1999). Importantly, rapid nuclear repositioning of the VSG promoter detected at 5 h after differentiation induction precedes the full down-regulation of VSG transcription given that VSG mRNA is still clearly detectable at 12 h after differentiation (Janzen et al., 2006). This is the case despite that VSG mRNAs are down-regulated by the 3'-untranslated region in the procyclic form (Berberof et al., 1995). This mechanism seems to be specific for the active ES promoter, as such rapid repositioning was not observed for the inactive 121 ES promoter or VSG121 BC loci at early differentiation stages (Fig. 4 c).
Interestingly, although 83% of GFP-positive nuclei tagged at the active VSG ES promoter showed a clear GFP-LacI dot in an exponentially growing bloodstream culture, upon 24 h of differentiation and nuclear repositioning, only 8% of the GFP-positive nuclei showed a detectable GFP-LacI dot (Fig. 4 d). In contrast, detection of the GFP-LacI bound to rDNA was evident in 98% of the GFP-positive nuclei even 24 h upon differentiation. Cell lines tagged either at the inactive 121 ES promoter region or in the VSG121 BC region showed an intermediate situation, with 5376% of the cells displaying a visible GFP dot 24 h upon differentiation (Fig. 4 d). Similar data were also obtained by in vivo GFP fluorescence direct visualization. In late differentiation (24 h), cells showed a GFP-LacI dot for the rDNA locus that was easily detectable. In contrast, 24 h upon differentiation, when the active ES was tagged, the GFP-LacI dot was almost undetectable even though the cells displayed diffuse GFP expression in their nuclei (Fig. 4 d).
These differential results suggest that GFP-LacI binding to the lac operator sequences inserted into distinct chromosomal positions reflect differences in chromatin accessibility and, thus, allow us to detect changes in chromatin condensation. These data are supported by the previously described VSG ES chromatin remodeling of the bloodstream VSG ES after differentiation to the procyclic form to yield a structure that is no longer permissive for T7RNAP transcription in vivo (Navarro et al., 1999; Janzen et al., 2004). Recently, Dietzel et al. (2004) detected an opposing chromatin decondensation event upon gene activation utilizing the accessibility of GFP-LacI. In this context, changes in chromatin seem to dramatically affect the accessibility of GFP-LacI to the lac operators inserted in the active VSG ES promoter region, as indicated by the drastic decrease in the number of nuclei with a detectable GFP dot (Fig. 4 d). Although chromatin in the rDNA locus is not affected at all upon differentiation, a moderate degree of chromatin condensation was also found for the VSG121 BC and inactive 121 ES promoter regions even though these loci are not transcribed in the bloodstream form. Moreover, an eventual repositioning of inactive ES promoter to the nuclear envelope does occur, as tagging the inactive ES promoter regions in established procyclic form revealed that these chromosomal loci localized to the nuclear envelope in 41.5% of nuclei (Table I). The active VSG ES promoter repositioning in 88% of cells at early stages of the differentiation process is in contrast with the 41.5% of nuclei detected for the promoter locus in established procyclics (Fig. 4 c and Table I). Thus, our results show that nuclear repositioning targets more efficiently at early stages during the differentiation process and suggest that the establishment of silencing requires a transient perinuclear localization.
Despite many correlations between nuclear localization and gene activity, it remains unclear whether nuclear repositioning is the cause or the result of such activity. Like yeast (Gartenberg et al., 2004), TbKU80-deficient trypanosomes are unable to halt VSG ES developmental silencing (Janzen et al., 2004) or the silencing of all VSG ESs but one in the bloodstream form (Conway et al., 2002), but no information on possible nuclear repositioning is available for this mutant. Although we cannot conclude that nuclear repositioning causes silencing, importantly, our data provide new insights into this problem. First, the active VSG ES promoter, located 60 kb upstream of the telomere, is the sole target for nuclear envelope relocation during differentiation, which is in contrast to inactive VSG ES promoters. Second, this rapid repositioning precedes chromatin condensation during differentiation (Fig. 4, c and d).
Nuclear envelope repositioning and chromatin condensation events have been suggested to affect pol II promoter activities in yeast and mammalian cells (Spector, 2003). Our data represent the first example of a pol Itranscribed chromatin domain targeted by a nuclear positiondependent silencing mechanism, indicating that such regulation is not restricted to pol II and that nuclear architecture plays a universal role in the epigenetic regulation of transcription.
| Materials and methods |
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GFP-Lac repressor tagging of chromosome sites
We have adapted the in vivo GFP tagging of chromosomes (Robinett et al., 1996; Straight et al., 1996) to bloodstream and procyclic trypanosomes. GFP-LacI was expressed in a tetracycline-inducible manner (Wirtz et al., 1999). We localized a particular DNA sequence in the nucleus by detection of the GFP-LacI bound to the lac operator sequences inserted in a chromosome. Stable transformants in T. brucei occur by homologous recombination, allowing us to insert a lac operator tagging cassette by a single crossover.
The bloodstream single marker (SM) cell line (Wirtz et al., 1999) and the procyclic cell line 1313-1333 (Alibu et al., 2005) were used for tetracycline-inducible expression. To express the GFP-LacI fusion in a tetracycline-dependent manner, we used pMig75, which was described previously (Navarro and Gull, 2001), in procyclic (1313-75) and bloodstream forms (SM-75). These two cell lines were used to obtain all transformants with the lac operator tagging constructs (described in the next paragraph) in the absence of tetracycline induction.
To GFP-LacI tag any locus of interest, we developed a series of constructs containing variable target DNA upstream of a 256lac operatorcontaining fragment (Navarro and Gull, 2001) and downstream of the promoter of the locus under study, which will drive expression of the selectable marker. To GFP tag the procyclin (GPEET/PAG3) locus, the targeting sequence located 60 bp upstream of the endogenous procyclin promoter was a PCR fragment generated using oligonucleotides (5'-CGAGCTCATACCGCTGCCGGCCTAAATGC-3' and 5'-CAAGCTTCATTTTGCACAAAATGCACTATTG-3'). To drive the expression of the hygromycin selectable marker, we used a procyclin promoter obtained by PCR using oligonucleotides (5'-GTGGATCCTCCATTTTGTGGCAGTGATGG-3' and 5'-CGCCATGGAAAGGGAACGAGGTGCCATTG-3'). To tag the rDNA spacer located between two rDNA repeats, the targeting sequence was a PCR fragment (5'-AATTCGAGCTCATATAGTTGG-3' and 5'-CGCGAAGCTTCGGTGTGTTGCCAAAGACATTC-3') using pLew82 as a template (Wirtz et al., 1999). To drive a bleomycin selectable marker, we used a ribosomal promoter obtained by PCR using oligonucleotides (5'-CGAGGGATCCACCCAGCGCGGGTGCATTC-3' and 5'-GGCATATGCAGTCCTGCTCCTCGGCC-3'). The 121VSG BC target sequences that we used were the full 121VSG cDNA and the ES promoter described previously (Navarro et al., 1999). The constructs to tag the active 221 ES and the inactive 121 ES were previously described (Navarro and Gull, 2001). All constructs were inserted upstream of the promoter of the locus under study, resulting in tandem repeats of similar promoters. However, in the case of the 121VSG BC targeting construct, we included an ES promoter to drive the selectable marker that is not present in the endogenous locus. GFP-LacI expression was induced in early exponential cultures with 10.1 µg/ml doxycycline (Sigma-Aldrich) for bloodstream and procyclics, for 16 h. Simultaneously with differentiation induction, the expression of GFP-LacI was induced with 0.1 µg/ml doxycycline.
Statistical position analysis
GFP-LacI expression in SM-75 and 1313-75 cell lines displayed a proportion of nuclei that did not express the GFP-LacI fusion after induction even without the lac operator repeats. Thus, this variable expression was not caused by a toxic effect but rather by variegated activity of the procyclin promoter driving the expression of GFP-LacI. Thus, all statistical analyses in both developmental stages described in this paper are based on GFP-LacIpositive nuclei cells recognized by the unbound GFP-LacI that was detected in a dispersed manner in the nucleoplasm. Statistical analysis of GFP-LacIexpressing nuclei that were positive or negative for the GFP dot was performed in 100120 interphase nuclei. The positive ones were grouped in different categories based on the GFP dot nuclear position within the DAPI staining (nuclear periphery, nucleolus, and nucleoplasma) and the relative position between the GFP dot and pol I signals. The scoring was performed by direct optical observation. Questionable cells were analyzed by 2D or 3D digital imaging. At least 20 representative cells were analyzed by 3D deconvolution microscopy. Tagged chromosome position and GFP dot detection probability distributions were compared between categories indicated with an asterisk in Fig. 4 using chi-square analysis. Statistical significance was determined by using a 95% confidence interval.
Online supplemental material
Video 1 shows a T. brucei live cell in which the procyclin chromosomal site is tagged with GFP-LacI. Video 2 shows in vivo visualization of the highly transcribed procyclin chromosomal site tagged with GFP in a procyclic-form trypanosome. Video 3 shows 3D deconvolved slice animation through the whole fixed nucleus. Online supplemental material is available at http://www.jcb.org/cgi/content/full/jcb.200607174/DC1.
| Acknowledgments |
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M. Navarro is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) International Research Scholar and a Marine Biology Laboratories 2005 Summer Research Fellowship recipient (grant MBL-0595975). This work was funded by an HHMI grant (55005525) and a Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia grant (SAF2002-00082-SAF2005-00657).
Submitted: 17 August 2006
Accepted: 4 December 2006
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