Mitotic bookmarking transcription factors (BFs) maintain the capacity to bind to their targets during mitosis, despite major rearrangements of the chromatin. While they were thought to propagate gene regulatory information through mitosis by statically occupying their DNA targets, it has recently become clear that BFs are highly dynamic in mitotic cells. This represents both a technical and a conceptual challenge to study and understand the function of BFs: First, formaldehyde has been suggested to be unable to efficiently capture these transient interactions, leading to profound contradictions in the literature; and second, if BFs are not permanently bound to their targets during mitosis, it becomes unclear how they convey regulatory information to daughter cells. Here, comparing formaldehyde to alternative fixatives we clarify the nature of the chromosomal association of previously proposed BFs in embryonic stem cells: While ESRRB can be considered as a canonical BF that binds at selected regulatory regions in mitosis, SOX2 and POU5F1 (also known as OCT4) establish DNA sequence-independent interactions with the mitotic chromosomes, either throughout the chromosomal arms (SOX2) or at pericentromeric regions (POU5F1). Moreover, we show that ordered nucleosomal arrays are retained during mitosis at ESRRB bookmarked sites, whereas regions losing transcription factor binding display a profound loss of order. By maintaining nucleosome positioning during mitosis, ESRRB might ensure the rapid post-mitotic re-establishment of functional regulatory complexes at selected enhancers and promoters. Our results provide a mechanistic framework that reconciles dynamic mitotic binding with the transmission of gene regulatory information across cell division.

Alternative pre-mRNA splicing is a highly cell type-specific process essential to generating protein diversity. However, the mechanisms responsible for the establishment and maintenance of heritable cell-specific alternative-splicing programs are poorly understood. Recent observations point to a role of histone modifications in the regulation of alternative splicing. Here we report a new mechanism of chromatin-mediated splicing control involving a long noncoding RNA (lncRNA). We have identified an evolutionarily conserved nuclear antisense lncRNA, generated from within the human FGFR2 locus, that promotes epithelial-specific alternative splicing of FGFR2. The lncRNA acts through recruitment of Polycomb-group proteins and the histone demethylase KDM2a to create a chromatin environment that impairs binding of a repressive chromatin-splicing adaptor complex important for mesenchymal-specific splicing. Our results uncover a new function for lncRNAs in the establishment and maintenance of cell-specific alternative splicing via modulation of chromatin signatures.

The access of Transcription Factors (TFs) to their cognate DNA binding motifs requires a precise control over nucleosome positioning. This is especially important following DNA replication and during mitosis, both resulting in profound changes in nucleosome organization over TF binding regions. Using mouse Embryonic Stem (ES) cells, we show that the TF CTCF displaces nucleosomes from its binding site and locally organizes large and phased nucleosomal arrays, not only in interphase steady-state but also immediately after replication and during mitosis. Correlative analyses suggest this is associated with fast gene reactivation following replication and mitosis. While regions bound by other TFs (Oct4/Sox2), display major rearrangement, the post-replication and mitotic nucleosome positioning activity of CTCF is not unique: Esrrb binding regions are also characterized by persistent nucleosome positioning. Therefore, selected TFs such as CTCF and Esrrb act as resilient TFs governing the inheritance of nucleosome positioning at regulatory regions throughout the cell-cycle.