Abstract
CD4+ T helper 17 (Th17) cells protect vertebrate hosts from extracellular pathogens at mucosal surfaces. Th17 cells form from naive precursors when signals from the T cell antigen receptor (TCR) and certain cytokine receptors induce the expression of the RORγt transcription factor, which activates a set of Th17-specific genes. Using T cell–specific loss-of-function experiments, we find that two components of the Polycomb repressive complex 1.1 (PRC1.1), BCL6 corepressor (BCOR) and KDM2B, which helps target the complex to unmethylated CpG DNA islands, are required for optimal Th17 cell formation in mice after Streptococcus pyogenes infection. Genome-wide expression and BCOR chromatin immunoprecipitation studies revealed that BCOR directly represses Lef1, Runx2, and Dusp4, whose products inhibit Th17 differentiation. Together, the results suggest that the PRC1.1 components BCOR and KDM2B work together to enhance Th17 cell formation by repressing Th17 fate suppressors.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1450-1464 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Journal of Experimental Medicine |
| Volume | 216 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 1 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors thank Jennifer Walter and Charles Ellwood for technical assistance and all members of the Jenkins lab for helpful discussions. The authors also thank Jason Motl at the University of Minnesota Flow Cytometry Facility for cell sorting and the University of Minnesota Genomics Center for sequencing RNA and ChIP libraries. This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants R01 AI039614, R01 AI103760, and R37 AI027998 to M.K. Jenkins; grants T32 AI007313 and F31 AI133716 to J.A. Kotov; grants T32 AI83196 and T32 AI007313 to D.I. Kotov; and grants R01 CA071540 and R01 HD084459 to V.J. Bardwell). This work was also supported by the University of Minnesota Microbiology and Immunology Department (Dennis W. Watson Fellowship to J.A. Kotov). The authors declare no competing financial interests. Author contributions: J.A. Kotov designed and performed all of the experiments, conducted bioinformatics analyses, and wrote the paper. D.I. Kotov provided expertise for CRISPR/Cas9 knockout experiments. J.L. Linehan conducted the bone marrow chimera experiment in Fig. 7 E, bottom panel. V.J. Bardwell and M.D. Gearhart oversaw and provided expertise for the RNA and ChIP sequencing experiments. M.D. Gearhart performed and oversaw bioinformatics analyses. M.K. Jenkins conceptualized and oversaw all experiments. All authors listed reviewed and provided edits to the manuscript.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants R01 AI039614, R01 AI103760, and R37 AI027998 to M.K. Jenkins; grants T32 AI007313 and F31 AI133716 to J.A. Kotov; grants T32 AI83196 and T32 AI007313 to D.I. Kotov; and grants R01 CA071540 and R01 HD084459 to V.J. Bardwell). This work was also supported by the University of Minnesota Microbiology and Immunology Department (Dennis W. Watson Fellowship to J.A. Kotov). The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Kotov et al. This article is distributed under the terms of an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike–No Mirror Sites license for the first six months after the publication date (see http://www.rupress.org/terms/). After six months it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 4.0 International license, as described at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).