TY - JOUR T1 - REST–Mediated Recruitment of Polycomb Repressor Complexes in Mammalian Cells A1 - Dietrich, Nikolaj A1 - Lerdrup, Mads A1 - Landt, Eskild A1 - Agrawal-Singh, Shuchi A1 - Bak, Mads A1 - Tommerup, Niels A1 - Rappsilber, Juri A1 - Södersten, Erik A1 - Hansen, Klaus Y1 - 2012/03/01 N2 - Author Summary Multicellular organisms are composed of a large number of specialized cell types that all originate from the Embryonic Stem cell (ES cell). It is crucial for the maintenance of naïve ES cells that developmental genes are kept in an off-state until appropriate differentiation stimuli are received. Polycomb Repressive Complexes, PRC1 and PRC2, are bound at and repress the activity of a large number of key developmental genes in ES cells and at different stages of differentiation. While in Drosophila the PRC complexes are recruited to DNA elements called Polycomb Response Elements (PREs), through the interaction with transcription factors; examples of such factors remain poorly characterized in mammals. We here demonstrate that the transcription factor Rest interacts with and is required for recruitment of PRC1 and PRC2 to a subset of Rest target genes in mouse embryonic stem (mES) cells. In line with REST being a repressor of neuronal genes, we found that PRC1 and PRC2 co-localized with REST at genes involved in neuronal development and got displaced during neuronal differentiation. Based on our data we propose that the PRC1 and PRC2 complexes function as co-repressors for Rest to control the timed expression of developmental genes in the process of cellular differentiation. JF - PLOS Genetics JA - PLOS Genetics VL - 8 IS - 3 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1002494 SP - e1002494 EP - PB - Public Library of Science M3 - doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1002494 ER -