Description
Purpose: Understand the synergistic relationship between the methyltransferases Set1 and Set5 in the regulation of gene expression. Methods: Total mRNA was obtained from two independent biological replicates each of wildtype (WT), set1?, set5?, SET5 Y402A and set1?set5? S. cerevisiae strains. Libraries were generated and sequenced using an Illumina HiSeq2000 platform. The sequence reads that passed quality filters were mapped using TopHat and expression levels were quantified using Cufflinks. Results: We generated FPKM expression values for each transcript and identified the differentially expressed genes using an FDR-adjusted p-value of 0.05. Subsequent data analysis was restricted to genes with fold-change greater than 1.7 relative to WT. Our results show that Set1 and Set5 have roles primarily in transcription repression. Moreover, lack of both Set1 and Set5 results in a synergistic exhacerbation of the transcriptional derepression observed in the single mutants. Further analysis revealed a specific enrichment of the Set5/Set1-repressed genes near repetitive DNA sequences of the genome. Conclusions: Our study uncovers an unexpected synergistic role of Set1 and Set5 in transcription repression of telomeric regions and Ty retrotransposons. Overall design: mRNA profiles of wildtype (WT), set1?, set5?, SET5 Y402A and set1?set5? were generated by sequencing using an Illumina HiSeq2000 platform. Two biological replicates of each strain were used.