Histone deacetylase 3 (HDAC3) is the catalytic component of NCoR/SMRT corepressor complexes that mediate the actions of transcription factors implicated in the regulation of B-cell development and function. We crossed Hdac3 conditional knockout mice with Mb1-Cre knockin animals to delete Hdac3 in early progenitor B cells. The spleens of Hdac3
CD43+ populations identified a defect in V H DJ H recombination with a severe reduction in productive rearrangements, which directly corresponded to the loss of pre-B cells from Hdac3 Δ/− bone marrow. For Hdac3 Δ/− B cells that did show productive VDJ rearrangement, there was significant skewing toward the incorporation of proximal V H gene segments and a corresponding reduction in distal V H gene segment use. Although transcriptional effects within these loci were modest, Hdac3 Δ/− progenitor cells displayed global changes in chromatin structure that likely hindered effective distal V-DJ recombination. Reintroduction of wild-type Hdac3 restored normal B-cell development, whereas an Hdac3 point mutant lacking deacetylase activity failed to complement this defect. Thus, the deacetylase activity of Hdac3 is required for the generation of mature B cells.istone deacetylase 3 (Hdac3) functions as the catalytic component of NCoR/SMRT corepressor complexes that are recruited by sequence-specific transcription factors to regulate transcription through the deacetylation of both histone and nonhistone proteins (1-3). Although bulk histone acetylation is generally controlled during replication by Hdac1 and Hdac2 (4, 5), Hdac3 is required for the maintenance of heterochromatin in some tissues (6, 7). Furthermore, the ability of Hdac3 to modulate chromatin accessibility has profound effects on gene transcription, DNA replication, and DNA repair (8-13). For example, hepatocyte-specific deletion of Hdac3 resulted in global changes in histone acetylation, nucleosomal compaction, and changes in gene expression (6). Although Hdac3 has robust deacetylase activity and is proposed to mediate the activity of some class II HDACs that lack intrinsic deacetylase function (14, 15), deacetylase inactive mutants of Hdac3 appeared to partially complement the phenotype of hepatocyte-specific Hdac3-knockout mice (16). This was interesting given that the livers of Albumin-Cre-Hdac3 −/− mice displayed phenotypes associated with global increases in histone acetylation, including a loss of heterochromatin (6, 9).The adaptive immune system has provided an excellent model for the study of higher-order chromatin structure and also provides a simple genetic system in which to dissect mechanisms of action for Hdac3. Lymphocytes rely on a series of recombinationdependent genome-editing processes, such as VDJ recombination and class-switch recombination, for their development and function. These recombination events are regulated through locus accessibility and require long-range chromatin interactions (17, 18). The Rag1 and Rag2 recombinases introduce DNA doublestrand breaks at recombination signal sequences, fol...