2009/05/29 by Carmelo Ferrai, Gabriela Naum-Onganı́a, Elena Longobardi +6 · 2 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Medicine · #Developmental Biology and Gene Regulation #Cell Adhesion Molecules Research #RNA Research and Splicing #Retinoic acid #Biology #Hox gene #Cell biology #Actin #Enhancer #Transcription (linguistics) #MDia1 #Transcription factor #Gene #Genetics #Actin cytoskeleton #Cell #Cytoskeleton
paper · doi:10.1091/mbc.e09-02-0114
openalex publication_date 2009/05/29 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
We have analyzed the role of actin polymerization in retinoic acid (RA)-induced HoxB transcription, which is mediated by the HoxB regulator Prep1. RA induction of the HoxB genes can be prevented by the inhibition of actin polymerization. Importantly, inhibition of actin polymerization specifically affects the transcription of inducible Hox genes, but not that of their transcriptional regulators, the RARs, nor of constitutively expressed, nor of actively transcribed Hox genes. RA treatment induces the recruitment to the HoxB2 gene enhancer of a complex composed of "elongating" RNAPII, Prep1, beta-actin, and N-WASP as well as the accessory splicing components p54Nrb and PSF. We show that inhibition of actin polymerization prevents such recruitment. We conclude that inducible Hox genes are selectively sensitive to the inhibition of actin polymerization and that actin polymerization is required for the assembly of a transcription complex on the regulatory region of the Hox genes.