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RNA-mediated symmetry breaking enables singular olfactory receptor choice

Pourmorady, Ariel D
Bashkirova, Elizaveta V
Chiariello, Andrea M
Belagzhal, Houda
Kodra, Albana
Duffié, Rachel
Kahiapo, Jerome
Monahan, Kevin
Pulupa, Joan
Schieren, Ira
... show 4 more
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Abstract

Olfactory receptor (OR) choice provides an extreme example of allelic competition for transcriptional dominance, where every olfactory neuron stably transcribes one of approximately 2,000 or more OR alleles. OR gene choice is mediated by a multichromosomal enhancer hub that activates transcription at a single OR, followed by OR-translation-dependent feedback that stabilizes this choice. Here, using single-cell genomics, we show formation of many competing hubs with variable enhancer composition, only one of which retains euchromatic features and transcriptional competence. Furthermore, we provide evidence that OR transcription recruits enhancers and reinforces enhancer hub activity locally, whereas OR RNA inhibits transcription of competing ORs over distance, promoting transition to transcriptional singularity. Whereas OR transcription is sufficient to break the symmetry between equipotent enhancer hubs, OR translation stabilizes transcription at the prevailing hub, indicating that there may be sequential non-coding and coding mechanisms that are implemented by OR alleles for transcriptional prevalence. We propose that coding OR mRNAs possess non-coding functions that influence nuclear architecture, enhance their own transcription and inhibit transcription from their competitors, with generalizable implications for probabilistic cell fate decisions.

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Pourmorady AD, Bashkirova EV, Chiariello AM, Belagzhal H, Kodra A, Duffié R, Kahiapo J, Monahan K, Pulupa J, Schieren I, Osterhoudt A, Dekker J, Nicodemi M, Lomvardas S. RNA-mediated symmetry breaking enables singular olfactory receptor choice. Nature. 2024 Jan;625(7993):181-188. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06845-4. Epub 2023 Dec 20. PMID: 38123679; PMCID: PMC10765522.

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10.1038/s41586-023-06845-4
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38123679
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Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. © The Author(s) 2023