Selective Interactions between Vertebrate Polycomb Homologs and the SUV39H1 Histone Lysine Methyltransferase Suggest that Histone H3-K9 Methylation Contributes to Chromosomal Targeting of Polycomb Group Proteins

Abstract

Polycomb group (PcG) proteins form multimeric chromatin-associated protein complexes that are involved in heritable repression of gene activity. Two distinct human PcG complexes have been characterized. The EED/EZH2 PcG complex utilizes histone deacetylation to repress gene activity. The HPC/HPH PcG complex contains the HPH, RING1, BMI1, and HPC proteins. Here we show that vertebrate Polycomb homologs HPC2 and XPc2, but not M33/MPc1, interact with the histone lysine methyltransferase (HMTase) SUV39H1 both in vitro and in vivo. We further find that overexpression of SUV39H1 induces selective nuclear relocalization of HPC/HPH PcG proteins but not of the EED/EZH2 PcG proteins. This SUV39H1-dependent relocalization concentrates the HPC/HPH PcG proteins to the large pericentromeric heterochromatin domains (1q12) on human chromosome 1. Within these PcG domains we observe increased H3-K9 methylation. Finally, we show that H3-K9 HMTase activity is associated with endogenous HPC2. Our findings suggest a role for the SUV39H1 HMTase and histone H3-K9 methylation in the targeting of human HPC/HPH PcG proteins to modified chromatin structures.

We thank Louise Aagaard for contributing to the identification of relocalization of BMI1 in SUV39H1-overexpressing cells, Wijnand Takkenberg for help with the confocal laser scanning microscope, Ulrike Waginger for help with the immuno-FISH staining, Phil Barnett for critically reading the manuscript, and Gunter Reuter for sharing unpublished data with us.

This work was sponsored in part by the Human Frontier Science Program (RG0039/1999-M).