title: Hotair Is Dispensible for Mouse Development.
abstract: Despite the crucial importance of Hox genes functions during animal development, the mechanisms that control their transcription in time and space are not yet fully understood. In this context, it was proposed that Hotair, a lncRNA transcribed from within the HoxC cluster regulates Hoxd gene expression in trans, through the targeting of Polycomb and consecutive transcriptional repression. This activity was recently supported by the skeletal phenotype of mice lacking Hotair function. However, other loss of function alleles at this locus did not elicit the same effects. Here, we re-analyze the molecular and phenotypic consequences of deleting the Hotair locus in vivo. In contrast with previous findings, we show that deleting Hotair has no detectable effect on Hoxd genes expression in vivo. In addition, we were unable to observe any significant morphological alteration in mice lacking the Hotair transcript. However, we find a subtle impact of deleting the Hotair locus upon the expression of the neighboring Hoxc11 and Hoxc12 genes in cis. Our results do not support any substantial role for Hotair during mammalian development in vivo. Instead, they argue in favor of a DNA-dependent effect of the Hotair deletion upon the transcriptional landscape in cis.
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Ana Rita
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Amândio
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Anamaria
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Necsulea
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Elisabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Joye
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics and Evolution, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Bénédicte
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Mascrez
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.|Department of Genetics and Evolution, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Denis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Duboule
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D047108:Embryonic Development / Q000235:genetics*; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; D018398:Homeodomain Proteins / Q000096:biosynthesis / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D018345:Mice, Knockout; D063146:Polycomb-Group Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D062085:RNA, Long Noncoding / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: C000608169:HOTAIR long non-coding RNA, mouse; D018398:Homeodomain Proteins; C111583:Hoxc11 protein, mouse; C469340:Hoxc12 protein, mouse; D063146:Polycomb-Group Proteins; D062085:RNA, Long Noncoding