No abstract

Allostery is well documented for proteins but less recognized for DNA-protein interactions. Here we report that specific binding of a protein on DNA is substantially stabilized or destabilized by another protein bound nearby. The ternary complex's free energy oscillates as a function of the separation between the two proteins with a periodicity of ~10 base pairs, the helical pitch of B-form DNA, and a decay length of ~15 base pairs. The binding affinity of a protein near a DNA hairpin is similarly dependent on their separation, which—together with molecular dynamics simulations—suggests that deformation of the double-helical structure is the origin of DNA allostery. The physiological relevance of this phenomenon is illustrated by its effect on gene expression in live bacteria and on a transcription factor's affinity near nucleosomes.

DNA base flipping is a fundamental theme in DNA biophysics. The dynamics for a B-DNA base to spontaneously flip out of the double helix has significant implications in various DNA-protein interactions but are still poorly understood. The spontaneous base-flipping rate obtained previously via the imino proton exchange assay is most likely the rate of base wobbling instead of flipping. Using the diffusion-decelerated fluorescence correlation spectroscopy together with molecular dynamics simulations, we show that a base of a single mismatched base pair (T-G, T-T, or T-C) in a doublestranded DNA can spontaneously flip out of the DNA duplex. The extrahelical lifetimes are on the order of 10 ms, whereas the intrahelical lifetimes range from 0.3 to 20 s depending on the stability of the base pairs. These findings provide detailed understanding on the dynamics of DNA base flipping and lay down foundation to fully understand how exactly the repair proteins search and locate the target mismatched base among a vast excess of matched DNA bases.fluctuation spectroscopy | integrated tempering sampling | rate constants | free-energy landscape A base in normal B-DNA spontaneously swinging out of the double helix to an extrahelical position is known as spontaneous base flipping. The dynamics of such base flipping is a fundamental issue in DNA biophysics. It is also related to how DNA repair or modification proteins search and fix the lesion bases to maintain the genome integrity or modify the DNA. Although extensive structural studies have found that many DNA base repair/modification proteins completely flip their target base out extrahelically (so-called enzymatic base flipping) (1-5), it is still under debate (6-11) whether the base flipping occurs spontaneously (9, 10, 12) or not (6-8). Accurate information on the dynamics of spontaneous base flipping is therefore of high interest and importance.However, the study of spontaneous base flipping is deemed to be difficult. The probability is extremely low for a single base to flip out of the DNA double helix in the absence of proteins. Hence only sensitive relaxation methods are able to detect such kind of fluctuation under equilibrium. As a well-known relaxation method, NMR has been applied to tackle this problem through the imino proton exchange assay (9,(13)(14)(15)(16)(17). In this assay, it is assumed that the exchange of the imino proton (in either G or T base) with the catalysts in the solution occurs only when the base flips out (13), and the extrapolated imino proton exchange rate at an infinite catalyst concentration is taken to be the base-flipping rate (14,15,17). According to these NMR studies the lifetime of the extrahelical state is on the order of microseconds, and that of the intrahelical state ranges from milliseconds to hundreds of milliseconds, depending on the stability of individual base pairs. MacKerell and coworkers as well as others have done extensive theoretical investigations and found that the target imino proton on the base already becomes accessible...

Oocyte growth is a key step in forming mature eggs that are ready to be fertilized. The states and modifications of chromatin represent critical sources of information for this process. However, the dynamics and interrelations of these chromatin characteristics remain elusive. In this study, we developed an improved scCOOL-seq technique (iscCOOL-seq), which is a multi-omics, single-cell and single-base resolution method with high mapping rates, and explored the chromatin accessibility landscape and its relationship to DNA methylation in growing mouse oocytes. The most dramatic change in chromatin accessibility occurs during oocyte growth initiation, accompanied with prominent transcriptome alterations and an elevated variation in DNA methylation levels among individual oocytes. Unlike CpG islands (CGIs), partially methylated domains (PMDs) are associated with a low density of nucleosome-depleted regions (NDRs) during the whole maturation period. Surprisingly, highly expressed genes are usually associated with NDRs at their transcriptional end sites (TESs). In addition, genes with de novo methylated gene bodies during oocyte maturation are already open at their promoters before oocyte growth initiation. Furthermore, epigenetic and transcription factors that might be involved in oocyte maturation are identified. Our work paves the way for dissecting the complex, yet highly coordinated, epigenetic alterations during mouse oocyte growth and the establishment of totipotency.

No abstract

Recent single-molecule measurements have revealed the DNA allostery in protein/DNA binding. MD simulations showed that this allosteric effect is associated with the deformation properties of DNA. In this study, we used MD simulations to further investigate the mechanism of DNA structural correlation, its dependence on DNA sequence, and the chemical modification of the bases. Besides a random sequence, poly d(AT) and poly d(GC) are also used as simpler model systems, which show the different bending and twisting flexibilities. The base-stacking interactions and the methyl group on the 5-carbon site of thymine causes local structures and flexibility to be very different for the two model systems, which further lead to obviously different tendencies of the conformational deformations, including the long-range allosteric effects.

We report a study of DNA deformations using a coarse-grained mechanical model and quantitatively interpret the allosteric effects in protein-DNA binding affinity. A recent single molecule study (Kim et al. (2013) Science, 339, 816) showed that when a DNA molecule is deformed by specific binding of a protein, the binding affinity of a second protein separated from the first protein is altered. Experimental observations together with molecular dynamics simulations suggested that the origin of the DNA allostery is related to the observed deformation of DNA’s structure, in particular the major groove width. In order to unveil and quantify the underlying mechanism for the observed major groove deformation behavior related to the DNA allostery, here we provide a simple but effective analytical model where DNA deformations upon protein binding are analyzed and spatial correlations of local deformations along the DNA are examined. The deformation of the DNA base orientations, which directly affect the major groove width, is found in both an analytical derivation and coarse-grained Monte Carlo simulations. This deformation oscillates with a period of 10 base pairs with an amplitude decaying exponentially from the binding site with a decay length lD~10 base pairs, as a result of the balance between two competing terms in DNA base stacking energy. This length scale is in agreement with that reported from the single molecule experiment. Our model can be reduced to the worm-like chain form at length scales larger than lP but is able to explain DNA’s mechanical properties on shorter length scales, in particular the DNA allostery of protein-DNA interactions.

DNA methylation on CpG sites is the most common epigenetic modification. Recently, methylation in a non-CpG context was found to occur widely on genomic DNA. Moreover, methylation of non-CpG sites is a highly controlled process, and its level may vary during cellular development. To study non-CpG methylation effects on DNA/protein interactions, we have chosen three human transcription factors (TFs): glucocorticoid receptor (GR), brain and muscle ARNT-like 1 (BMAL1) - circadian locomotor output cycles kaput (CLOCK) and estrogen receptor (ER) with methylated or unmethylated DNA binding sequences, using single-molecule and isothermal titration calorimetry assays. The results demonstrated that these TFs interact with methylated DNA with different effects compared with their cognate DNA sequences. The effects of non-CpG methylation on transcriptional regulation were validated by cell-based luciferase assay at protein level. The mechanisms of non-CpG methylation influencing DNA-protein interactions were investigated by crystallographic analyses and molecular dynamics simulation. With BisChIP-seq assays in HEK-293T cells, we found that GR can recognize highly methylated sites within chromatin in cells. Therefore, we conclude that non-CpG methylation of DNA can provide a mechanism for regulating gene expression through directly affecting the binding of TFs.