MECP2 directly interacts with RNA polymerase II to modulate transcription in human neurons

Yi Liu; Anthony Flamier; George W Bell; Annette Jun Diao; Troy W Whitfield; Hao-Che Wang; Yizhe Wu; Fabian Schulte; Max Friesen; Ruisi Guo; Maisam Mitalipova; X Shawn Liu; Seychelle M Vos; Richard A Young; Rudolf Jaenisch

doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2024.04.007

MECP2 directly interacts with RNA polymerase II to modulate transcription in human neurons

Neuron. 2024 Apr 30:S0896-6273(24)00245-9. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2024.04.007. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.
² Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.
³ Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY 10032, USA.
⁴ Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.
⁵ Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA; Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.
⁶ Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA; Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA. Electronic address: jaenisch@wi.mit.edu.

PMID: 38697112
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2024.04.007

Abstract

Mutations in the methyl-DNA-binding protein MECP2 cause the neurodevelopmental disorder Rett syndrome (RTT). How MECP2 contributes to transcriptional regulation in normal and disease states is unresolved; it has been reported to be an activator and a repressor. We describe here the first integrated CUT&Tag, transcriptome, and proteome analyses using human neurons with wild-type (WT) and mutant MECP2 molecules. MECP2 occupies CpG-rich promoter-proximal regions in over four thousand genes in human neurons, including a plethora of autism risk genes, together with RNA polymerase II (RNA Pol II). MECP2 directly interacts with RNA Pol II, and genes occupied by both proteins showed reduced expression in neurons with MECP2 patient mutations. We conclude that MECP2 acts as a positive cofactor for RNA Pol II gene expression at many neuronal genes that harbor CpG islands in promoter-proximal regions and that RTT is due, in part, to the loss of gene activity of these genes in neurons.

Keywords: MECP2; RNA polymerase II; Rett syndrome; chromatin binding; transcriptional regulation.