Abstract
Insulator elements and matrix attachment regions are essential for the organization of genetic information within the nucleus. By comparing the pattern of histone modifications at the mouse and human c-myc alleles, we identified an evolutionarily conserved boundary at which the c-myc transcription unit is separated from the flanking condensed chromatin enriched in lysine 9-methylated histone H3. This region harbors the c-myc insulator element (MINE), which contains at least two physically separable, functional activities: enhancer-blocking activity and barrier activity. The enhancer-blocking activity is mediated by CTCF. Chromatin immunoprecipitation assays demonstrate that CTCF is constitutively bound at the insulator and at the promoter region independent of the transcriptional status of c-myc. This result supports an architectural role of CTCF rather than a regulatory role in transcription. An additional higher-order nuclear organization of the c-myc locus is provided by matrix attachment regions (MARs) that define a domain larger than 160 kb. The MARs of the c-myc domain do not act to prevent the association of flanking regions with lysine 9-methylated histones, suggesting that they do not function as barrier elements.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by a Research Scholar Grant from the American Cancer Society to A.K. (RSG-01-163-01-GMC). W.H.S. was supported by a grant from the NIH (CA82459).
We are especially grateful to Jim Moon and Brad Nelson (Virginia Mason Research Center) for generously providing and preparing chromatin from CTLL2 cells; Corty Thienes (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center) for help with MAR assays; Mark Groudine, Susan Parkhurst, and Mike Bulger (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center) for critical reading of the manuscript, and all members of the Groudine lab for discussion.