作者
Shiri Kult, Tsviya Olender, Marco Osterwalder, Svetalana Markman, Dena Leshkowitz, Sharon Krief, Ronnie Blecher-Gonen, Shani Ben-Moshe, Lydia Farack, Hadas Keren-Shaul, Tomer-Meir Salame, Terence D Capellini, Shalev Itzkovitz, Ido Amit, Axel Visel, Elazar Zelzer
发表日期
2021/1/15
期刊
Elife
卷号
10
页码范围
e55361
出版商
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
简介
The mechanical challenge of attaching elastic tendons to stiff bones is solved by the formation of a unique transitional tissue. Here, we show that murine tendon-to-bone attachment cells are bi-fated, activating a mixture of chondrocyte and tenocyte transcriptomes, under regulation of shared regulatory elements and Krüppel-like factors (KLFs) transcription factors. High-throughput bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing of humeral attachment cells revealed expression of hundreds of chondrogenic and tenogenic genes, which was validated by in situ hybridization and single-molecule ISH. ATAC sequencing showed that attachment cells share accessible intergenic chromatin areas with either tenocytes or chondrocytes. Epigenomic analysis revealed enhancer signatures for most of these regions. Transgenic mouse enhancer reporter assays verified the shared activity of some of these enhancers. Finally, integrative chromatin and motif analyses and transcriptomic data implicated KLFs as regulators of attachment cells. Indeed, blocking expression of both Klf2 and Klf4 in developing limb mesenchyme impaired their differentiation.
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