The genomic sequences bound to special AT-rich sequence-binding protein 1 (SATB1) in vivo in Jurkat T cells are tightly associated with the nuclear matrix at the bases of the chromatin loops.

Special AT-rich sequence-binding protein 1 (SATB1), a DNA-binding protein expressed predominantly in thymocytes, recognizes an ATC sequence context that consists of a cluster of sequence stretches with well-mixed A's, T's, and C's without G's on one strand. Such regions confer a high propensity for stable base unpairing. Using an in vivo cross-linking strategy, specialized genomic sequences (0.1-1. 1 kbp) that bind to SATB1 in human lymphoblastic cell line Jurkat cells were individually isolated and characterized. All in vivo SATB1-binding sequences examined contained typical ATC sequence contexts, with some exhibiting homology to autonomously replicating sequences from the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae that function as replication origins in yeast cells. In addition, LINE 1 elements, satellite 2 sequences, and CpG island-containing DNA were identified. To examine the higher-order packaging of these in vivo SATB1-binding sequences, high-resolution in situ fluorescence hybridization was performed with both nuclear "halos" with distended loops and the nuclear matrix after the majority of DNA had been removed by nuclease digestion. In vivo SATB1-binding sequences hybridized to genomic DNA as single spots within the residual nucleus circumscribed by the halo of DNA and remained as single spots in the nuclear matrix, indicating that these sequences are localized at the base of chromatin loops. In human breast cancer SK-BR-3 cells that do not express SATB1, at least one such sequence was found not anchored onto the nuclear matrix. These findings provide the first evidence that a cell type-specific factor such as SATB1 binds to the base of chromatin loops in vivo and suggests that a specific chromatin loop domain structure is involved in T cell-specific gene regulation.