Acetyltransferase complexes of the MYST family with distinct substrate specificities and functions maintain a conserved association with different ING tumor suppressor proteins. ING complexes containing the HBO1 acetylase are a major source of histone H3 and H4 acetylation in vivo and play critical roles in gene regulation and DNA replication. Here, our molecular dissection of HBO1/ING complexes unravels the protein domains required for their assembly and function. Multiple PHD finger domains present in different subunits bind the histone H3 N-terminal tail with a distinct specificity toward lysine 4 methylation status. We show that natively regulated association of the ING4/5 PHD domain with HBO1-JADE determines the growth inhibitory function of the complex, linked to its tumor suppressor activity. Functional genomic analyses indicate that the p53 pathway is a main target of the complex, at least in part through direct transcription regulation at the initiation site of p21/CDKN1A. These results demonstrate the importance of ING association with MYST acetyltransferases in controlling cell proliferation, a regulated link that accounts for the reported tumor suppressor activities of these complexes.
Members of the ING (inhibitor of growth) family of growth regulators are present in all eukaryotes, with the five human proteins (ING1 to ING5) and the three from Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Yng1, Yng2, and Pho23) being the most studied. Their homology is highest at the carboxyl termini within a plant homeodomain (PHD) finger-a motif common to many chromatin regulatory proteins (8, 54). Expression analyses of several tumor types show that ING genes are either mutated or downregulated in many forms of cancer (43,73), and a number of studies have implicated the ING proteins in the regulation of the cell cycle and proliferation, cellular aging and senescence, hormone signaling pathways, brain tumor growth, and angiogenesis (reviewed in reference 51). These functions stem from direct mechanistic roles in chromatin modification and remodeling, gene-specific transcription regulation, and DNA repair, recombination, and replication (2, 54, 61).The multisubunit protein complexes containing ING family members have been purified and characterized from yeast and human cells (reviewed in references 2 and 54). The human INGs can be divided into three groups-ING1/2, ING3, and ING4/5-based on their association with three distinct types of protein complexes (8). Each of these complexes regulates chromatin modification and structure via histone acetylation and deacetylation. The ING complexes that carry out histone acetylation contain members of the MYST family of histone acetyltransferases (HATs) as their catalytic subunits (Fig. 1A). Human MYST HATs include Tip60 (KAT5), HBO1 (KAT7), MOZ (KAT6A), MORF (KAT6B), and MOF (KAT8). These enzymes are also known to play crucial roles in transcription activation and in DNA repair, recombination, and replication and are implicated in development and many human diseases, most notably cancer (2,14,...