Effect of deficiency of Elk4 on transcriptome changes in murine bone marrow derived mast cells upon Fc?RI mediated activation
The proliferative potential of mast cells after activation for 3-4h was found to be decreased, which suggests that mast cell degranulation and cell proliferation are differentially regulated. ELK4, a member of the ternary complex factor (TCF) subfamily of Ets transcription factors, is one of the downstream effectors of MAPK signaling that is critical for cell proliferation. And Elk4 has been identified to be vital for macrophage activation in response to zymosan and the transcriptional response to 12-O-tetrade canoyl phorbol-13-acetate (TPA) stimulation in fibroblast. However, the effect of ELK4 on the mast cell transcriptional response to Fc?RI and GPCR mediated activation and its potential functional significance in mast cells remain unclear. Here, We characterised the transcriptional program downstream of Fc?RI signalling using IgE-DNP/HSA stimulation by RNA-seq. The investigation of the transcriptional response was performed using murine bone marrow derived mast cells(BMMCs) from different animals: (i) wild type mice, (ii) Elk4 heterozygous mice, (iii) Elk4 knockout mice. Overall, our study identifies a new physiological role of the transcription factor ELK4 in mast cell proliferation and activation. Overall design: To investigate the function of Elk4 on mast cell proliferation and activation, we cultured murine bone marrow derived mast cells(BMMCs) from  littermate wild type(WT), Elk4 heterozygous(HZ), Elk4 knockout(KO) mice, and observed the effects of Elk4 deficiency in WT, HZ and KO BMMCs upon IgE-DNP/HSA stimulation. We then performed gene expression profiling analysis  using data obtained from RNA-seq of 3 different cells in control and stimulated group. Comparative gene expression proliling analysis of RNA-seq data for WT, HZ and KO BMMCs with or without IgE-DNP/HSA stimulation.