RNA Pol II accumulates at promoters of growth genes during developmental arrest
Abstract
When Caenorhabditis elegans larvae hatch from the egg case in the absence of food, their development is arrested (L1 arrest), and they show increased stress resistance until food becomes available. To study nutritional control of larval development, we analyzed growth and gene expression profiles during L1 arrest and recovery. Larvae that were fed responded relatively slowly to starvation compared with the rapid response of arrested larvae to feeding. Chromatin immunoprecipitation of RNA polymerase II (Pol II) followed by deep sequencing showed that during L1 arrest, Pol II continued transcribing starvation-response genes, but the enzyme accumulated on the promoters of growth and development genes. In response to feeding, promoter accumulation decreased, and elongation and messenger RNA levels increased. Therefore, accumulation of Pol II at promoters anticipates nutritionally controlled gene expression during C. elegans development.
Additional Information
© 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received for publication 11 December 2008; accepted for publication 17 February 2009. We thank L. Schaeffer, D. Trout, A. Mortazavi, J. L. Riechmann, and B. Wold for assistance and discussions. We thank E. H. Davidson for sharing his COPAS Biosorter and B. Hwang for sharing his destabilized YFP plasmid. L.R.B. was supported by the American Cancer Society. P.W.S. is an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which supported this work. Microarray analysis and sequencing were performed in the Millard and Muriel Jacobs Genetics and Genomics Laboratory at Caltech. Data and analysis available for download from NCBI Gene Expression Omnibus (accession GSE14009) at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE14009.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 14186
- DOI
- 10.1126/science.1169628
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20090508-105122714
- American Cancer Society
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- Created
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2009-05-13Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-08Created from EPrint's last_modified field