27Enhanced telomere maintenance is evident in malignant cancers. While telomeres are thought 28 to be inherently heterochromatic, detailed mechanisms of how epigenetic modifications impact 29 telomere protection and structures are largely unknown in human cancers. Here we develop a 30 molecular tethering approach to experimentally enrich heterochromatin protein HP1α specifically 31 at telomeres. This results in increased deposition of H3K9me3 at cancer cell telomeres.
32Telomere extension by telomerase is attenuated, and damage-induced foci at telomeres are was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.The copyright holder for this preprint (which . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/368464 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Jul. 13, 2018;
56consisting of the telomere nucleosomal chromatin plus shelterin complex, establishes a capping 57 structure to maintain genome integrity 5, 6 . While functions associated with shelterin itself have 58 been widely studied, molecular details of how this peculiar telomere chromatin impacts 59 mammalian telomere maintenance remain largely unexplored.
61Telomere chromatin is thought to be inherently condensed heterochromatin primarily based on 62 findings in yeast 7, 8 ,
77All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.
95and rather infrequent HP1 are naturally localized at human telomeres 11, 14,[32][33][34][35] . This provides an 96 opportunity to enhance the presence of this naturally occurring component of telomeric
97chromatin to study its role in telomere biology.
99In this report, we present a novel approach to study the consequences of locally altering 100 telomere chromatin properties on the key functions of telomeres. We enrich
101heterochromatinization at telomeres by fusing HP1alpha (HP1α) to the telomere binding 102 shelterin protein TRF1. We find that deposition of heterochromatin marks at telomeres is
103All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.
115A model system to study HP1α function at telomeres
116To study how altered telomere chromatin regulates its maintenance, we set up a controlled 117 system to enhance heterochromatin in a locus-specific manner. We fused shelterin TRF1, which 118 confers telomeric locus-specificity, to HP1α, a protein involved in heterochromatin establishment 119 and maintenance. HP1α contains a conserved N-terminal chromo domain (CD) that binds to 120 dimethylated and trimethylated H3K9 (H3K9me2/3) and a C-terminal chromo shadow domain 121 (CSD) for dimerization and ligand binding 31, 36 . These two domains are joined by a flexible hinge 122 domain (Fig. 1a)
31.
124To validate our system, EGFP-tagged TRF1 fused with HP1α ( Fig. 1a) was transiently 125 cotransfected with mCherry-tagged TRF2...