TY - JOUR A1 - Schlereth, Katharina A1 - Heyl, Charlotte A1 - Krampitz, Anna-Maria A1 - Mernberger, Marco A1 - Finkernagel, Florian A1 - Scharfe, Maren A1 - Jarek, Michael A1 - Leich, Ellen A1 - Rosenwald, Andreas A1 - Stiewe, Thorsten T1 - Characterization of the p53 Cistrome - DNA Binding Cooperativity Dissects p53's Tumor Suppressor Functions JF - PLOS Genetics N2 - p53 protects us from cancer by transcriptionally regulating tumor suppressive programs designed to either prevent the development or clonal expansion of malignant cells. How p53 selects target genes in the genome in a context-and tissue-specific manner remains largely obscure. There is growing evidence that the ability of p53 to bind DNA in a cooperative manner prominently influences target gene selection with activation of the apoptosis program being completely dependent on DNA binding cooperativity. Here, we used ChIP-seq to comprehensively profile the cistrome of p53 mutants with reduced or increased cooperativity. The analysis highlighted a particular relevance of cooperativity for extending the p53 cistrome to non-canonical binding sequences characterized by deletions, spacer insertions and base mismatches. Furthermore, it revealed a striking functional separation of the cistrome on the basis of cooperativity; with low cooperativity genes being significantly enriched for cell cycle and high cooperativity genes for apoptotic functions. Importantly, expression of high but not low cooperativity genes was correlated with superior survival in breast cancer patients. Interestingly, in contrast to most p53-activated genes, p53-repressed genes did not commonly contain p53 binding elements. Nevertheless, both the degree of gene activation and repression were cooperativity-dependent, suggesting that p53-mediated gene repression is largely indirect and mediated by cooperativity-dependently transactivated gene products such as CDKN1A, E2F7 and non-coding RNAs. Since both activation of apoptosis genes with non-canonical response elements and repression of pro-survival genes are crucial for p53's apoptotic activity, the cistrome analysis comprehensively explains why p53-induced apoptosis, but not cell cycle arrest, strongly depends on the intermolecular cooperation of p53 molecules as a possible safeguard mechanism protecting from accidental cell killing. KW - cell-cycle arrest KW - gene expression KW - breast cancer KW - human genome KW - transcriptional repression KW - consensus DNA KW - in-vivo KW - apoptosis KW - network KW - damage Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-127579 SN - 1553-7404 VL - 9 IS - 8 ER -