Species-specific strategies underlying conserved functions of metabolic transcription factors

Raymond E. Soccio, Geetu Tuteja, Logan J. Everett, Zhaoyu Li, Mitchell A. Lazar, Klaus H. Kaestner

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

49 Scopus citations

Abstract

The winged helix protein FOXA2 and the nuclear receptor peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (PPARγ) are highly conserved, regionally expressed transcription factors (TFs) that regulate networks of genes controlling complex metabolic functions. Cistrome analysis for Foxa2 in mouse liver and PPARγ in mouse adipocytes has previously produced consensus-binding sites that are nearly identical to those used by the corresponding TFs in human cells. We report here that, despite the conservation of the canonical binding motif, the great majority of binding regions forFOXA2inhumanliver and forPPARγ inhumanadipocytes are not in the orthologous locations corresponding to themousegenome, and vice versa. Of note, TF binding can be absent in one species despite sequence conservation, including motifs that do support binding in the other species, demonstrating a major limitation of in silico binding site prediction. Whereas only approximately 10% of binding sites are conserved, gene-centric analysis reveals that about 50% of genes with nearby TF occupancy are shared across species for both hepatic FOXA2 and adipocyte PPARγ. Remarkably, for both TFs, many of the shared genes function in tissuespecific metabolic pathways, whereas species-unique genes fail to show enrichment for these pathways. Nonetheless, the species-unique genes, like the shared genes, showed the expected transcriptional regulation by the TFs in loss-of-function experiments. Thus, species-specific strategies underlie the biological functions of metabolic TFs that are highly conserved across mammalian species. Analysis of factor binding in multiple species may be necessary to distinguish apparent species-unique noise and reveal functionally relevant information.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)694-706
Number of pages13
JournalMolecular Endocrinology
Volume25
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2011

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Molecular Biology
  • Endocrinology

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