Rockefeller University Digital Commons @ RU Student Theses and Dissertations 2009 Regulation of the Heterochromatin Protein 1 by Phosphorylation of Histone H3 and the HP1 Hinge Domain Holger Dormann Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.rockefeller.edu/ student_theses_and_dissertations Part of the Life Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Dormann, Holger, "Regulation of the Heterochromatin Protein 1 by Phosphorylation of Histone H3 and the HP1 Hinge Domain" (2009). Student Theses and Dissertations. Paper 109. This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ RU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Student Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ RU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. REGULATION OF HETEROCHROMATIN PROTEIN 1 BY PHOSPHORYLATION OF HISTONE H3 AND THE HP1 HINGE DOMAIN A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of The Rockefeller University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Holger Dormann June 2009 © Copyright by Holger Dormann 2009 REGULatION OF HETEROCHROMATIN PROTEIN 1 BY PHOSPHORYLatION OF HISTONE H3 AND THE HP1 HINGE DOMAIN Holger Dormann, Ph. D. The Rockefeller University 2009 Chromatin, a polymer formed from DNA, histones, and associated proteins, is the physiological form of genetic information in all eukaryotic cells. Posttranslational modification of histones, such as acetylation, methylation, and phosphorylation, regulates various DNA-dependent processes, ranging from transcription to replication, DNA repair, and apoptosis. A key mechanism by which histone modifications exert these effects is by recruitment of specific binding partners (effector proteins), that in turn direct downstream functions. Insight into the underlying mechanisms are of great importance for a full understanding of chromatin structure and function. One of these effector proteins, Heterochromatin Protein 1 (HP1), plays important roles in heterochromatin formation. It is recruited to chromatin by interaction with methylated lysine 9 of histone H3 (H3K9me). However, it has remained enigmatic how HP1 reversibly dissociates from chromatin during mitosis, while the histone mark that recruits the protein, H3K9me, persists. In the first part of my thesis, my collaborators and I show through a combination of in vitro and in vivo experiments that this release depends on a novel mechanism, “methyl-phos switching”, in which two nearby histone marks collaborate to accomplish the dynamic regulation of effector protein binding. Phosphorylation of histone H3 at serine 10, immediately adjacent to HP1’s binding site at H3K9me, at the onset of mitosis interferes with HP1 binding to H3K9me, resulting in the release of the effector protein. In the second part of my thesis, I investigate to what extent posttranslational modification of HP1 itself is involved in the regulation of the effector protein. I identify ten novel phosphorylation sites for the three human HP1 isoforms (α, β, γ), most of which map to the HP1 “hinge region” and are specifically phosphorylated in mitosis. For one highly conserved site, HP1α serine 92 phosphorylation, I identify Aurora B as the responsible kinase in vivo. In vitro data suggest that mitotic phosphorylation of the HP1α hinge may play a role in the regulation of HP1 association with RNA. My thesis work indicates that HP1’s behavior and interactions in mitosis are regulated by posttranslational modifications on two levels: phosphorylation of histone H3 as well as phosphorylation of HP1 itself. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my mentor, Dr. David Allis, for his support and guidance. His creativity and enthusiasm for science have been a source of inspiration throughout my thesis, with his constructive criticism, he encouraged me to think independently as a scientist, and when I felt discouraged, he cheered me up - I want to thank him for all that. I thank my faculty advisory committee, Dr. Günter Blobel, Dr. Hironori Funabiki, and Dr. Wolfgang Fischle, for their time, their interest in my work, and all their helpful suggestions. I also thank Dr. Ming-Ming Zhou for agreeing to serve on my thesis committee as my external member. I am grateful to Dr. Blobel also for the training and advice he gave me dur- ing my stay in his lab as an undergraduate and diploma student. This time has been extremely valuable for me, and I want to thank him for giving me the opportunity to work in his lab at a very early stage of my studies. I would like to thank Dr. Funabiki for serving as the chair of my commit- tee, for the fruitful collaboration on the "methyl-phos switching" project and for many helpful discussions also outside of my committee meetings. I owe Dr. Fischle thanks for many different things: He not only got me started in the Allis lab and trained me at the bench during the first years of my Ph.D., but he later on also served on my thesis committee, gave me the chance to work in his lab in Göttingen as a guest scientist and finally has made the long way from Germany for my defense. I want to thank him for all this, as well as for his friendship. I thank our collaborators Hillary Montgomery, Dr. Beatrix Ueberheide, Dr. Jeffrey Shabanowitz and Dr. Donald Hunt for their excellent mass spec- trometry work as well as the pleasant interaction during our collabora- tion. iii Boo Shan Tseng was our collaborator on the "methyl-phos switching" proj- ect and I thank her for all her work and contributions to this project. I also would like to acknowledge her for generously providing important reagents for some of my experiments. Dr. Gwen Lomberk and Dr. Raul Urrutia deserve many thanks for gener- ously sharing their antibody against phosphorylated HP1α with me. Dr. Alex Ruthenburg has helped me tremendously at various stages on my way to this thesis manuscript. From advice at the bench, comments on the manuscript, rendering of X-ray figures in Pymol ("mystic crystal revelations") to many late-night hours during the lay-out of this thesis, his help has been unwavering. I deeply appreciate this support and his friendship. I thank Aaron Goldberg, Dr. Monika Lachner, Dr. Tom Milne, and Dr. Greg Wang for critically reading parts of my thesis and for their helpful comments on my thesis talk. Amrita Basu helped me with computational analysis, and Nicolai Siegel with proof-reading and the final production process of this thesis. I would like to thank Dr. Emily Bernstein for help with RNA experiments, and her and Owen Wu for our ongoing collaboration on the RNA interac- tion of Heterochromatin Protein 1. I appreciate the collaboration with Dr. David Shechter and Dr. Sandra Hake for our joint publication on techniques of histone purification and analysis, and with Dr. Greg Wang on leukemogenic PHD finger fusions. I am very grateful to all past and present members of the Allis lab for their willingness to always share reagents and advice. There have been far too many occasions to list, so I can only acknowledge them collectively for all their help over the years. I also want to thank them for being excellent colleagues and for keeping up a good lab spirit. Many of them have become good friends, and I thank iv them for numerous late-night hours shared at the bench, entertaining lunches, and for teaching me English words that I can’t share here, be- cause otherwise this page would have to be censored. I thank the lab manager of the Allis lab, Jamie Winshell, for running the daily lab business and helping me out at countless little problems and de- sasters, and the laboratory administrator of the Allis lab, Chandra Egger, for help with many organizational things. The members of the Fischle lab in Göttingen were very generous in shar- ing their time, bench space, protocols and reagents with me, and I greatly appreciate their welcoming me during my stay in their lab. I thank Dr. Elias Coutavas and other members of the Blobel lab for advice, reagents, and the permission to use their cell disruptor. Upstate Biotechnology has helped me generously with reagents, and I want to thank the colleagues there for the many friendly interactions. I appreciate the friendly and professional assistance of the staff at the Rockefeller Bioimaging Resource Center, Proteomics Resource Center, Flow Cytometry Resource Center. I also thank the mass spectrometry fa- cility in Göttingen for their excellent work. I am indebted to the Dean’s office of the David Rockefeller Graduate Pro- gram for their help at countless occasions. Financial support was provided by the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds and the David Rockefeller Graduate Program, and I want to thank them for it. I am grateful to my friends at Rockefeller and in New York for making my time in New York such a pleasant one. I thank my family, in particular my parents Elmar and Adelheid Dormann, for their support and constant encouragement. Lastly, I want to thank my wife Dorothee for her love and support and for being there for me at every step of the way. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.............................................................iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.............................................................vi LIST OF FIGURES....................................................................xii LIST OF TABLES......................................................................xvii ABBREVIATIONS..................................................................... xviii CHAPTER 1: GENERAL INTRODUCTION...............................