GSE63151
The GATA transcription factor GtaC regulates early developmental gene expression dynamics in Dictyostelium
In many developmental systems, morphogenesis is coupled with dramatic changes in spatiotemporal gene expression, often orchestrated by the coordinated action of transcription factors. Development of the social soil amoebae Dictyostelium discoideum proceeds through a sequence of morphological and transcriptional changes, but the role of transcription factors in development is not well understood. GtaC, a GATA-type zinc-finger transcription factor, is essential for Dictyostelium development. It decodes pulsatile extracellular cAMP signals during early development and mediates cell-type differentiation at later stages. Here, we studied the developmental regulatory roles of GtaC through the concerted analysis of temporal ChIP- and RNA-sequencing data from strains that carry different alleles of gtaC. We show that GtaC exhibits temporally distinctive DNA-binding patterns throughout early development, accompanied by largely cotemporaneous expression of its target genes. We also show that GtaC binds DNA in two modes. One of these modes exhibits binding preferences for canonical GATA-like sequences, the regulatory consequences accompanying which is predominantly up-regulation of target gene expression. The other binding mode is mostly associated with down-regulation. Among its targets we find transcription factors that are essential for development as well as genes involved in cAMP signaling and cell-type specification. Our results suggest that GtaC is a master regulator that regulates multiple physiological processes during early development, when Dictyostelium transitions from a group of unicellular amoebae to an integrated multicellular organism. Overall design: Cotemporaneous transcriptional profiling and ChIP sequencing during early Dictyostelium development