Epigenetic regulation of gene transcription has been shown to coordinate with nutrient availability, yet the mechanisms underlying this coordination remain incompletely understood. Here, we show that glucose starvation suppresses histone 2A K119 monoubiquitination (H2Aub), a histone modification that correlates with gene repression. Glucose starvation suppressed H2Aub levels independently of energy stress-mediated AMP-activated protein kinase activation and possibly through NADPH depletion and subsequent inhibition of BMI1, an integral component of polycomb-repressive complex 1 (PRC1) that catalyzes H2Aub on chromatin. Integrated transcriptomic and epigenomic analyses linked glucose starvation-mediated H2Aub repression to the activation of genes involved in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response. We further showed that this epigenetic mechanism has a role in glucose starvation-induced cell death and that pharmacologic inhibition of glucose transporter 1 and PRC1 synergistically promoted ER stress and suppressed tumor growth in vivo. Together, these results reveal a hitherto unrecognized epigenetic mechanism coupling glucose availability to the ER stress response. SIGNIFICANCE: These findings link glucose deprivation and H2A ubiquitination to regulation of the ER stress response in tumor growth and demonstrate pharmacologic susceptibility to inhibition of polycomb and glucose transporters.
©2020 American Association for Cancer Research.