Key result
Cofilin-1 gene silencing led to a drop in FUrd incorporation into nascent transcripts, suggesting cofilin-1 plays a major role in RNA polymerase II transcription elongation.
Cofilin-1 plays a major role in RNA polymerase II transcription by facilitating the association of elongating pol II and actin with active genes.
Cofilin-1 emerges as a regulator of pol II elongation in animal cardiomyocytes; leaves open relevance to human cardiovascular transcription.
In mammals actin contributes to transcription elongation by facilitating establishment of permissive chromatin. Here we report that the F-actin severing protein cofilin-1 is part of the same complex with actin and phosphorylated RNA polymerase (pol) II. In chromatin immunoprecipitation assays cofilin-1 was found selectively associated with transcribed regions of active genes, its occupancy being influenced by the polymerization state of actin. Cofilin-1 gene silencing led to a drop in FUrd incorporation into nascent transcripts. In cofilin-1 silenced cells chromatin immunoprecipitations showed that active genes were devoid of actin, phosphorylated pol II and displayed low histone H3 acetylation levels on K9. These findings suggest that cofilin-1 plays a major role in pol II transcription, facilitating association of elongating pol II and actin with active genes. We speculate that cofilin-1 performs its function in pol II transcription by regulating polymerization of gene-associated actin.
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Obrdlík et al. (2011) studied this question. Cofilin-1 gene silencing was evaluated on FUrd incorporation into nascent transcripts and association of actin and phosphorylated pol II with active genes. Cofilin-1 gene silencing led to a drop in FUrd incorporation into nascent transcripts, suggesting cofilin-1 plays a major role in RNA polymerase II transcription elongation.
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