Transcriptional repression by the thyroid hormone receptor: function of corepressor complexes:

Transcriptomic and phenotypic profiling in developing zebrafish exposed to thyroid hormone receptor agonists

There continues to be a need to develop in vivo high-throughput screening (HTS) and computational methods to screen chemicals for interaction with the estrogen, androgen, and thyroid pathways and as complements to in vitro HTS assays. This study explored the utility of an embryonic zebrafish HTS approach to identify and classify endocrine bioactivity using phenotypically-anchored transcriptome profiling. Transcriptome analysis was conducted on zebrafish embryos exposed to 25 estrogen-, androgen-, or thyroid-active chemicals at concentrations that elicited adverse malformations or mortality at 120 h post-fertilization in 80% of animals exposed. Analysis of the top 1000 significant differentially expressed transcripts and developmental toxicity profiles across all treatments identified a unique transcriptional and phenotypic signature for thyroid hormone receptor agonists. This unique signature has the potential to be used as a tiered in vivo HTS and may aid in identifying chemicals that interact with the thyroid hormone receptor.

The functional relationship between co-repressor N-CoR and SMRT in mediating transcriptional repression by thyroid hormone receptor alpha

A central issue in mediating repression by nuclear hormone receptors is the distinct or redundant function between co-repressors N-CoR (nuclear receptor co-repressor) and SMRT (silencing mediator of retinoid and thyroid hormone receptor). To address the functional relationship between SMRT and N-CoR in TR (thyroid hormone receptor)-mediated repression, we have identified multiple TR target genes, including BCL3 (B-cell lymphoma 3-encoded protein), Spot14 (thyroid hormone-inducible hepatic protein), FAS (fatty acid synthase), and ADRB2 (beta-adrenergic receptor 2). We demonstrated that siRNA (small interfering RNA) treatment against either N-CoR or SMRT is sufficient for the de-repression of multiple TR target genes. By the combination of sequence mining and physical association as determined by ChIP (chromatin immunoprecipitation) assays, we mapped the putative TREs (thyroid hormone response elements) in BCL3, Spot14, FAS and ADRB2 genes. Our data clearly show that SMRT and N-CoR are independently recruited to various TR target genes. We also present evidence that overexpression of N-CoR can restore repression of endogenous genes after knocking down SMRT. Finally, unliganded, co-repressor-free TR is defective in repression and interacts with a co-activator, p300. Collectively, these results suggest that both SMRT and N-CoR are limited in cells and that knocking down either of them results in co-repressor-free TR and consequently de-repression of TR target genes.