0000000000625503
AUTHOR
Veronica La Fiora
Perturbation of Developmental Regulatory Gene Expression by a G-Quadruplex DNA Inducer in the Sea Urchin Embryo.
The G-quadruplex (G4) is a four-stranded DNA structure identified in vivo in guanine-rich regions located in the promoter of a number of genes. Intriguing evidence suggested that small molecules acting as G4-targeting ligands could potentially regulate multiple cellular processes via either stabilizing or disruptive effects on G4 motifs. Research in this field aims to prove the direct role of G4 ligands and/or structures on a specific biological process in a complex living organism. In this study, we evaluate in vivo the effects of a nickel(II)-salnaphen-like complex, named Nisaln, a potent G4 binder and stabilizer, during embryogenesis of the sea urchin embryo. We describe developmental de…
Genome wide mapping of the MBF-1 binding sites during embryogenesis of the sea urchin reveals it is a chromatin organizer.
The Zinc-finger MBF1 factor is a transcription activator involved in the expression of the early histone genes during development of the sea urchin embryo (1). The DNA-binding domain of MBF1 shares high sequence similarity with that of the CTCF chromatin organizer but, unexpectedly, extensive in silico analysis failed to identify the sea urchin CTCF ortholog (2, 3). This led us to speculate that MBF1 could have co-opted the function of CTCF during evolution of the echinoderms. To support this hypothesis, we performed the genome-wide MBF1-binding sites mapping in the P. lividus genome, by chromatin immunoprecipitation coupled to next generation sequencing (ChIP-Seq). We observed that MBF1 bi…