H3K9 histone methyltransferase G9a-mediated transcriptional activation of p21.

We report that H3K9 HMTase G9a activates transcription of the cell cycle regulatory gene, p21, in p53-null H1299 cells. Positive regulation of p21 by G9a is independent of its HMTase activity. We demonstrate that G9a upregulates p21 via interaction with PCAF, and provide evidence that the activating complex is recruited to the p21 promoter upon DNA damage-inducing agent etoposide treatment.

H3K27 methylation and H3S28 phosphorylation-dependent transcriptional regulation by INHAT subunit SET/TAF-Iβ.

Significant progress has been made in understanding the relationship between histone modifications and 'reader' molecules and their effects on transcriptional regulation. A previously identified INHAT complex subunit, SET/TAF-Iβ, binds to histones and inhibits histone acetylation. To investigate the binding specificities of SET/TAF-Iβ to various histone modifications, we employed modified histone tail peptide array analyses.

KDM3B is the H3K9 demethylase involved in transcriptional activation of lmo2 in leukemia.

Histone lysine methylation and demethylation are considered critical steps in transcriptional regulation. In this report, we performed chromatin immunoprecipitation with microarray technology (ChIP-chip) analysis to examine the genome-wide occupancy of H3K9-me2 during all-trans-retinoic acid (ATRA)-induced differentiation of HL-60 promyelocytic leukemia cells. Using this approach, we found that KDM3B, which contains a JmjC domain, was downregulated during differentiation through the recruitment of a corepressor complex.