Vascular histone deacetylation by pharmacological HDAC inhibition

Abstract

HDAC inhibitors can regulate gene expression by post-translational modification of histone as well as non-histone proteins. Often studied at single loci, increased histone acetylation is the paradigmatic mechanism of action. However, little is known of the extent of genome-wide changes in cells stimulated by the hydroxamic acids, TSA and SAHA. In this article we map vascular chromatin modifications including histone H3 acetylation of lysine 9 and 14 (H3K9/14ac) using chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) coupled with massive parallel sequencing (ChIP-seq). Since acetylation mediated gene expression is often associated with modification of other lysine residues we also examined H3K4me3 and H3K9me3 as well as changes in CpG methylation (CpG-seq). RNA sequencing indicates the differential expression of approximately 30% of genes, with almost equal numbers being up- and down-regulated. We observed broad deacetylation and gene expression changes conferred by TSA and SAHA mediated by the loss of EP300/CREBBP binding at multiple gene promoters. This study provides an important framework for HDAC inhibitor function in vascular biology and a comprehensive description of genome-wide deacetylation by pharmacological HDAC inhibition.