Shared Mechanisms in and Expression in 3T3-L1 Cells: Studies on Epigenetic and Positive Feedback Regulation of during Adipogenesis.

We have previously reported the identification of a novel splicing variant of the mouse peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor- (), referred to as . This variant, encoding the PPAR1 protein, is abundantly and ubiquitously expressed, playing a crucial role in adipogenesis. possesses a unique promoter and 5' untranslated region (5'UTR), distinct from those of the canonical mouse and mRNAs. We observed a significant increase in DNA methylation at two CpG sites within the proximal promoter region (-733 to -76) of during adipocyte differentiation. Concurrently, chromatin immunoprecipitation-quantitative PCR (ChIP-qPCR) using antibodies against H3K4me3 and H3K27ac indicated marked elevations in both methylation and acetylation of histone H3, while the repressive histone mark H3K9me2 significantly decreased, at the transcription start sites of both and following differentiation. Knocking down using specific siRNA also led to a decrease in mRNA and PPAR2 protein levels; conversely, knocking down resulted in reduced mRNA and PPAR1 protein levels, suggesting synergistic transcriptional regulation of and during adipogenesis. Furthermore, our experiments utilizing the CRISPR-Cas9 system identified crucial PPAR-binding sites within the gene locus, underscoring their significance in adipogenesis. Based on these findings, we propose a model of positive feedback regulation for and expression during the adipocyte differentiation process in 3T3-L1 cells.