Oesophageal adenocarcinoma (OAC) is one of the ten most prevalent forms of cancer and is showing a rapid increase in incidence and yet exhibits poor survival rates. Compared to many other common cancers, the molecular changes that occur in this disease are relatively poorly understood. However, genes encoding chromatin remodeling enzymes are frequently mutated in OAC. This is consistent with the emerging concept that cancer cells exhibit reprogramming of their chromatin environment which leads to subsequent changes in their transcriptional profile. Here, we have used ATAC-seq to interrogate the chromatin changes that occur in OAC using both cell lines and patient-derived material. We demonstrate that there are substantial changes in the regulatory chromatin environment in the cancer cells and using this data we have uncovered an important role for ETS and AP1 transcription factors in driving the changes in gene expression found in OAC cells.
Esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) is one of the most frequent causes of cancer death, and yet compared to other common cancers, we know relatively little about the molecular composition of this tumor type. To further our understanding of this cancer, we have used open chromatin profiling to decipher the transcriptional regulatory networks that are operational in EAC. We have uncovered a transcription factor network that is usually found in primitive intestinal cells during embryonic development, centered on HNF4A and GATA6. These transcription factors work together to control the EAC transcriptome. We show that this network is activated in Barrett's esophagus, the putative precursor state to EAC, thereby providing novel molecular evidence in support of stepwise malignant transition. Furthermore, we show that HNF4A alone is sufficient to drive chromatin opening and activation of a Barrett's-like chromatin signature when expressed in normal human epithelial cells. Collectively, these data provide a new way to categorize EAC at a genome scale and implicate HNF4A activation as a potential pivotal event in its malignant transition from healthy cells.Corresponding authors: andrew.d.sharrocks@manchester.ac.uk, yeng.ang@srft.nhs.uk Article published online before print. Article, supplemental material, and publication date are at
ATAC-seq is a recently developed method to identify the areas of open chromatin in a cell. These regions usually correspond to active regulatory elements and their location profile is unique to a given cell type. When done at single-cell resolution, ATAC-seq provides an insight into the cell-to-cell variability that emerges from otherwise identical DNA sequences by identifying the variability in the genomic location of open chromatin sites in each of the cells. This paper presents Scasat (single-cell ATAC-seq analysis tool), a complete pipeline to process scATAC-seq data with simple steps. Scasat treats the data as binary and applies statistical methods that are especially suitable for binary data. The pipeline is developed in a Jupyter notebook environment that holds the executable code along with the necessary description and results. It is robust, flexible, interactive and easy to extend. Within Scasat we developed a novel differential accessibility analysis method based on information gain to identify the peaks that are unique to a cell. The results from Scasat showed that open chromatin locations corresponding to potential regulatory elements can account for cellular heterogeneity and can identify regulatory regions that separates cells from a complex population.
Oesophageal adenocarcinoma (OAC) is one of the most common causes of cancer deaths and yet compared to other common cancers, we know relatively little about the underlying molecular mechanisms. Barrett's oesophagus (BO) is the only known precancerous precursor to OAC, but our understanding about the specific events leading to OAC development is limited. Here, we have integrated gene expression and chromatin accessibility profiles of human biopsies of BO and OAC and identified a strong cell cycle gene expression signature in OAC compared to BO. Through analysing associated chromatin accessibility changes, we have implicated the transcription factor KLF5 in the transition from BO to OAC. Importantly, we show that KLF5 expression is unchanged during this transition, but instead, KLF5 is redistributed across chromatin in OAC cells to directly regulate cell cycle genes specifically in OAC. Our findings have potential prognostic significance as the survival of patients with high expression of KLF5 target genes is significantly lower. We have provided new insights into the gene expression networks in OAC and the mechanisms behind progression to OAC, chiefly the repurposing of KLF5 for novel regulatory activity in OAC. similar GO terms to those enriched in genes upregulated in OAC compared to BO ( Fig. 3F).GSEA also identified the same gene set terms: "G2M checkpoint" and "E2F1 targets" (Fig. 3G).Next we asked whether these genes are directly regulated by KLF5, and carried out ChIPseq for KLF5 in OE19 cells. Anti-KLF5 antibodies precipitated KLF5 ( Supplementary Fig. 3I) and biological replicates were highly reproducible ( Supplementary Fig. 3J). Therefore, we took the overlap of peaks between biological replicates forward for downstream analyses, resulting in 13,542 peaks ( Supplementary Fig. 3K; Supplementary Table S5). These peaks are highly enriched in the KLF5 motif, demonstrating the validity of the dataset, and also in AP1(FRA1) and GATA (GATA6) motifs, which we have previously revealed in genome wide studies as implicated in OAC (Britton et al., 2017; Rogerson et al., 2019) ( Supplementary Fig. 3L). Focussing on the 97 genes that are upregulated in OAC and also downregulated after KLF5 depletion, 97% have a KLF5 ChIP-seq peak within 0.5 Mb of the TSS and the median distance between a KLF5 ChIP-seq peak and the TSS was 15,604 bp ( Supplementary Fig. 3M). This is indicative of direct regulation by KLF5. An example gene is CDC25B which harbours multiple KLF5 ChIP-seq peaks surrounding its locus (Fig. 3H).Collectively, these results suggest a direct activator role of KLF5 in controlling cell cycle genes in OAC. The KLF5 cistrome is reconfigured during the progression from BO to OAC.Having determined a role for KLF5 in controlling cell cycle associated gene expression in OAC cells, we sought to determine the mechanism through which KLF5 acquires these functions. We first asked whether KLF5 expression changes in the transition from BO to OAC, however no increase in expression was found (Fig. 4A). An alternative me...
Oesophageal adenocarcinoma (OAC) is one of the most common causes of cancer deaths. Barrett's oesophagus (BO) is the only known precancerous precursor to OAC, but our understanding about the molecular events leading to OAC development is limited. Here, we have integrated gene expression and chromatin accessibility profiles of human biopsies and identified a strong cell cycle gene expression signature in OAC compared to BO. Through analysing associated chromatin accessibility changes, we have implicated the transcription factor KLF5 in the transition from BO to OAC. Importantly, we show that KLF5 expression is unchanged during this transition, but instead, KLF5 is redistributed across chromatin to directly regulate cell cycle genes specifically in OAC cells. This new KLF5 target gene programme has potential prognostic significance as high levels correlate with poorer patient survival. Thus, the repurposing of KLF5 for novel regulatory activity in OAC provides new insights into the mechanisms behind disease progression.
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