In this episode of the Epigenetics Podcast, we caught up with Karen Arndt from the University of Pittsburgh to talk about her work on transcription elongation control by the Paf1 complex.

Karen Arndt and her lab investigate the process of transcriptional elongation and how RNA polymerase II overcomes obstacles like nucleosomes. One of the proteins that helps overcome those obstacles is the Paf1 complex. This complex associates with the transcribing polymerase and helps in modifying the chromatin template by ubiquitinating Histone H2B and methylating Histone H3.

References

Squazzo, S. L., Costa, P. J., Lindstrom, D. L., Kumer, K. E., Simic, R., Jennings, J. L., Link, A. J., Arndt, K. M., & Hartzog, G. A. (2002). The Paf1 complex physically and functionally associates with transcription elongation factors in vivo. The EMBO journal, 21(7), 1764–1774. https://doi.org/10.1093/emboj/21.7.1764

Van Oss, S. B., Shirra, M. K., Bataille, A. R., Wier, A. D., Yen, K., Vinayachandran, V., Byeon, I. L., Cucinotta, C. E., Héroux, A., Jeon, J., Kim, J., VanDemark, A. P., Pugh, B. F., & Arndt, K. M. (2016). The Histone Modification Domain of Paf1 Complex Subunit Rtf1 Directly Stimulates H2B Ubiquitylation through an Interaction with Rad6. Molecular cell, 64(4), 815–825. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molcel.2016.10.008

Cucinotta, C. E., Hildreth, A. E., McShane, B. M., Shirra, M. K., & Arndt, K. M. (2019). The nucleosome acidic patch directly interacts with subunits of the Paf1 and FACT complexes and controls chromatin architecture in vivo. Nucleic acids research, 47(16), 8410–8423. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkz549

Hildreth, A. E., Ellison, M. A., Francette, A. M., Seraly, J. M., Lotka, L. M., & Arndt, K. M. (2020). The nucleosome DNA entry-exit site is important for transcription termination and prevention of pervasive transcription. eLife, 9, e57757. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.57757

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