bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.22.435873; this version posted March 22, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. Increased ACTL6A Occupancy Within mSWI/SNF Chromatin Remodelers Drives Human Squamous Cell Carcinoma Chiung-Ying Chang1,2,7, Zohar Shipony3,7, Ann Kuo1,2, Kyle M. Loh4,5, William J. Greenleaf3,6, Gerald R. Crabtree1,2,5* 1Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California 94305, USA. 2Department of Pathology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California 94305, USA. 3Department of Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California 94305, USA. 4Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California 94305, USA. 5Department of Developmental Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California 94305, USA. 6Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA. 7These authors contributed equally. *Corresponding author: Gerald R. Crabtree,
[email protected] Summary Mammalian SWI/SNF (BAF) chromatin remodelers play dosage-sensitive roles in many human malignancies and neurologic disorders. The gene encoding the BAF subunit, ACTL6A, is amplified at an early stage in the development of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs), but its oncogenic role remains unclear. Here we demonstrate that ACTL6A overexpression leads to its stoichiometric assembly into BAF complexes and drives its interaction and engagement with specific regulatory regions in the genome. In normal epithelial cells, ACTL6A was sub-stoichiometric to other BAF subunits. However, increased ACTL6A levels by ectopic expression or in SCC cells led to near-saturation of ACTL6A within BAF complexes.