1. Academic Validation
  2. Disease Model of GATA4 Mutation Reveals Transcription Factor Cooperativity in Human Cardiogenesis

Disease Model of GATA4 Mutation Reveals Transcription Factor Cooperativity in Human Cardiogenesis

  • Cell. 2016 Dec 15;167(7):1734-1749.e22. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2016.11.033.
Yen-Sin Ang 1 Renee N Rivas 1 Alexandre J S Ribeiro 2 Rohith Srivas 3 Janell Rivera 4 Nicole R Stone 1 Karishma Pratt 4 Tamer M A Mohamed 1 Ji-Dong Fu 4 C Ian Spencer 4 Nathaniel D Tippens 5 Molong Li 4 Anil Narasimha 3 Ethan Radzinsky 4 Anita J Moon-Grady 6 Haiyuan Yu 5 Beth L Pruitt 2 Michael P Snyder 3 Deepak Srivastava 7
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease and Roddenberry Center for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA; Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA.
  • 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
  • 3 Department of Genetics and Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
  • 4 Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease and Roddenberry Center for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
  • 5 Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA.
  • 6 Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA.
  • 7 Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease and Roddenberry Center for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA; Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA. Electronic address: dsrivastava@gladstone.ucsf.edu.
Abstract

Mutation of highly conserved residues in transcription factors may affect protein-protein or protein-DNA interactions, leading to gene network dysregulation and human disease. Human mutations in GATA4, a cardiogenic transcription factor, cause cardiac septal defects and cardiomyopathy. Here, iPS-derived cardiomyocytes from subjects with a heterozygous GATA4-G296S missense mutation showed impaired contractility, calcium handling, and metabolic activity. In human cardiomyocytes, GATA4 broadly co-occupied cardiac enhancers with TBX5, another transcription factor that causes septal defects when mutated. The GATA4-G296S mutation disrupted TBX5 recruitment, particularly to cardiac super-enhancers, concomitant with dysregulation of genes related to the phenotypic abnormalities, including cardiac septation. Conversely, the GATA4-G296S mutation led to failure of GATA4 and TBX5-mediated repression at non-cardiac genes and enhanced open chromatin states at endothelial/endocardial promoters. These results reveal how disease-causing missense mutations can disrupt transcriptional cooperativity, leading to aberrant chromatin states and cellular dysfunction, including those related to morphogenetic defects.

Keywords

GATA4; TBX5; birth defect; cardiomyopathy; congenital heart defects; disease modeling; epigenetics; gene regulation; heart development; systems biology.

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