Transcription Factor Bach1 and Bach2 Operate Erythro-Myeloid Competitive Differentiation By Responding to Environmental Changes

Hematopoietic system is maintained by the differentiation and proliferation of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs) and their commitment to the mature blood cells should be tightly controlled by gene regulatory networks (GRNs) governed by transcription factors (TFs). To keep the homeostasis, GRNs should respond to the environmental changes, such as infection. However, the precise mechanism of such a system remains to be elucidated.

TFs Bach1 and Bach2 belong to the basic region-leucine zipper family and recognize Maf-recognition elements containing AP-1 site (Oyake et al., 1996). We have previously shown that Bach1^-/-Bach2^-/-(DKO; double knockout) mice show erythropoiesis disorders with increased myelopoiesis from common myeloid progenitors (CMPs), which is an erythro-myeloid bifurcation point (ASH2015; Abstract ID# 81562) (Akashi et al., 2000). Since this phenotype is similar to that of LPS treated mice (O'Connell et al., 2008), we hypothesized that Bach factors work as sensors for infection.

First, to evaluate the cell-intrinsic function of Bach factors, WT or DKO bone marrow cells were depleted of mature differentiated cells and transplanted to lethally irradiated WT mice. After 8 weeks, DKO donor cells showed greater myelopoiesis and lesser lymphogenesis compared to WT, suggesting Bach factors are necessary to suppress myelopoiesis to the appropriate level in regenerating hematopoiesis.

To reveals the function of Bach factors in HSPCs from other aspect, LSKs (Lin^-Sca1⁺c-kit⁺) were infected with retroviruses expressing Bach1-IRES-eGFP or Bach2-IRES-eGFP and transplanted to lethally irradiated WT mice. Cells derived from transgene induced LSKs were monitored by GFP fluorescence. After 2 weeks, Bach1 overexpressing LSKs did not show any difference in erythropoiesis and myelopoiesis. This might be explained by the high Bach1 expression levels in HSPCs according to the previous report (Lara-Astiaso et al., 2014). On the other hand, Bach2 overexpressing LSKs showed increased erythropoiesis and decreased myelopoiesis, suggesting that Bach2 regulates the erythro-myeloid lineage specification as expected by the observations of DKO mice.

To assess the function of Bach factors under infection, we used M1 murine myeloid leukemia cells that differentiate to macrophage-like cells by LPS stimulation. LPS stimulation reduced expressions of Bach1, Bach2 and erythroid gene Gata1, and induced those of myeloid genes such as Cebpb and Csf1rin a dose-dependent manner. To determine if down-regulation of Bach factors is necessary for myeloid differentiation, Bach1 or Bach2 were transgenically overexpressed in M1 cells. Both of the M1 cells overexpressing Bach1 or Bach2 showed lower expression levels of myeloid marker CD11b compared to control under LPS stimulation. Thus, reductions of the expression of Bach factors in response to LPS were necessary for appropriate myeloid differentiation.

To identify the direct target genes of Bach factors, Bach1 or Bach2 ChIP-seq data of M1 cells (Ebina-Shibuya et al., 2016) were merged with results of expression profile of WT and DKO CMPs. Several myeloid or inflammatory genes such as Cebpb, Fcgr1 and Tlr4 were identified as putative repressed target genes and several erythroid or lymphoid genes such as Klf1, Rag1 and Rag2 were identified as putative activated target genes. In addition, when Bach1 or Bach2 ChIP-seq data were merged by that of C/EBPb, which also possesses AP-1 site as its target motif, obtained from ENCODE database (ENCSR000AIB), we found that there were several co-localized regions of Bach and C/EBPb near the myeloid genes such as Cebpa, Il6 and Fcgr1. These observations suggest that Bach factors repress myeloid genes by competitively working with C/EBPb at same genomic regions. This is particularly interesting in the light of the latest findings showing the Bach2 function on AP-1 site in lymphoid cells (Sidwell et al., 2016).

These results reveal a novel mechanism by which how the differentiation of erythro-myeloid bifurcation is controlled by responding to environmental changes. Bach factors regulate erythro-myeloid competitive differentiation by promoting and repressing erythroid and myeloid differentiation, respectively. We suggest that infection promote myelopoiesis at the expense of erythropoiesis by reducing the expression of Bach factors. Therefore, Bach factors may function as sensors for environmental changes.