Essential roles of the histone methyltransferase ESET in the epigenetic control of neural progenitor cells during development

In the developing brain, neural progenitor cells (NPCs) switch the differentiation competency via changing gene expression profiles that are governed partly by epigenetic control such as histone modification, although the precise mechanism is unknown. Here we found that ESET/Setdb1/KMT1E, a histone H3 Lys-9 (H3K9) methyltransferase, was highly expressed at early stages of brain development but down-regulated over time, and that ablation of ESET led to decreased H3K9 trimethylation and misregulation of genes, resulting in severe brain defects and early lethality. In the mutant brain, endogenous retrotransposons were derepressed, and non-neural gene expression was activated. Furthermore, early neurogenesis was most severely impaired, while astrocyte formation was enhanced. We conclude that there is an epigenetic role of ESET in temporal and tissue-specific gene regulation in the developing brain.

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Tan SL, Nishi M, Ohtsuka T, Matsui T, Takemoto K, Kamio-Miura A, Aburatani H, Shinkai Y, Kageyama R