Epigenetic aberrations are widespread in cancer, yet the underlying mechanisms and causality remain poorly understood1-3. A subset of gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GISTs) lack canonical kinase mutations but instead have succinate dehydrogenase (SDH) deficiency and global DNA hyper-methylation4,5. Here, we associate this hyper-methylation with changes in genome topology that activate oncogenic programs. To investigate epigenetic alterations systematically, we mapped DNA methylation, CTCF insulators, enhancers, and chromosome topology in KIT-mutant, PDGFRA-mutant and SDH-deficient GISTs. Although these respective subtypes shared similar enhancer landscapes, we identified hundreds of putative insulators where DNA methylation replaced CTCF binding in SDH-deficient GISTs. We focused on a disrupted insulator that normally partitions a core GIST super-enhancer from the FGF4 oncogene. Recurrent loss of this insulator alters locus topology in SDH-deficient GISTs, allowing aberrant physical interaction between enhancer and oncogene. CRISPR-mediated excision of the corresponding CTCF motifs in an SDH-intact GIST model disrupted the boundary between enhancer and oncogene, and strongly upregulated FGF4 expression. We also identified a second recurrent insulator loss event near the KIT oncogene, which is also highly expressed across SDH-deficient GISTs. Finally, we established a patient-derived xenograft (PDX) from an SDH-deficient GIST that faithfully maintains the epigenetics of the parental tumour, including hypermethylation and insulator defects. This PDX model is highly sensitive to FGF receptor (FGFR) inhibition, and more so to combined FGFR and KIT inhibition, validating the functional significance of the underlying epigenetic lesions. Our study reveals how epigenetic alterations can drive oncogenic programs in the absence of canonical kinase mutations, with implications for mechanistic targeting of aberrant pathways in cancers.
Pubmed ID: 31666694 RIS Download
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Set of software modules for performing common ChIP-seq data analysis tasks across the whole genome, including positional correlation analysis, peak detection, and genome partitioning into signal-rich and signal-poor regions. The tools are designed to be simple, fast and highly modular. Each program carries out a well defined data processing procedure that can potentially fit into a pipeline framework. ChIP-Seq is also freely available on a Web interface.
View all literature mentionsOpen source database of curated, non-redundant set of profiles derived from published collections of experimentally defined transcription factor binding sites for multicellular eukaryotes. Consists of open data access, non-redundancy and quality. JASPAR CORE is smaller set that is non-redundant and curated. Collection of transcription factor DNA-binding preferences, modeled as matrices. These can be converted into Position Weight Matrices (PWMs or PSSMs), used for scanning genomic sequences. Web interface for browsing, searching and subset selection, online sequence analysis utility and suite of programming tools for genome-wide and comparative genomic analysis of regulatory regions. New functions include clustering of matrix models by similarity, generation of random matrices by sampling from selected sets of existing models and a language-independent Web Service applications programming interface for matrix retrieval.
View all literature mentionsPrivately held company that develops and produces antibodies, ELISA kits, ChIP kits, proteomic kits, and other related reagents used to study cell signaling pathways that impact human health.
View all literature mentionsTHIS RESOURCE IS NO LONGER IN SERVICE. Documented on February 28,2023. Software Python package that provides infrastructure to process data from high-throughput sequencing assays. While the main purpose of HTSeq is to allow you to write your own analysis scripts, customized to your needs, there are also a couple of stand-alone scripts for common tasks that can be used without any Python knowledge.
View all literature mentionsA next-generation web-based application that aims to provide an integrated solution for both visualization and analysis of deep-sequencing data, along with simple access to public datasets.
View all literature mentionsJava toolset for working with next generation sequencing data in the BAM format.
View all literature mentionsAn approach to discover, genotype, and characterize typical and atypical CNVs from family and population genome sequencing.
View all literature mentionsSoftware tools for Motif Discovery and next-gen sequencing analysis. Used for analyzing ChIP-Seq, GRO-Seq, RNA-Seq, DNase-Seq, Hi-C and numerous other types of functional genomics sequencing data sets. Collection of command line programs for unix style operating systems written in Perl and C++.
View all literature mentionsA read summarization program, which counts mapped reads for the genomic features such as genes and exons.
View all literature mentionsAn Antibody supplier; Dako was purchased by Agilent in 2012 and several years later the websites began to reflect the Dako products as part of the Agilent catalog.
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