Divergent functions of hematopoietic transcription factors in lineage priming and differentiation during erythro-megakaryopoiesis

Combinatorial actions of relatively few transcription factors control hematopoietic differentiation. To investigate this process in erythro-megakaryopoiesis, we correlated the genome-wide chromatin occupancy signatures of four master hematopoietic transcription factors (GATA1, GATA2, SCL/TAL1 and FLI1) and three diagnostic histone modification marks with the gene expression changes that occur during development of primary megakaryocytes (MEG) and erythroblasts (ERY) from murine fetal liver hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells. We identified a robust, genome-wide mechanism of MEG-specific lineage priming by a previously described stem/progenitor cell-expressed transcription factor heptad (GATA2, LYL1, SCL/TAL1, FLI1, ERG, RUNX1, LMO2) binding to MEG-specific cis-regulatory modules in multipotential hematopoietic progenitors. This is followed by genome-wide GATA factor switching that mediates further induction of MEG-specific genes following lineage commitment. Interaction between GATA and ETS factors appears to be a key determinant of these processes. In contrast, ERY-specific lineage priming occurs is biased toward GATA2-independent mechanisms. In addition to its role in MEG lineage priming, GATA2 plays an extensive role in late megakaryopoiesis as a transcriptional repressor at loci defined by a specific DNA signature. Our findings reveal important new insights into how ERY and MEG lineages arise from a common bipotential precursor via overlapping and divergent functions of shared hematopoietic transcription factors.

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Pimkin M, Kossenkov AV, Mishra T, Morrissey CS, Wu W, Keller CA, Blobel GA, Lee D, Beer MA, Hardison RC, Weiss MJ