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Thymine DNA glycosylase promotes transactivation of β-catenin/TCFs by cooperating with CBP Free
Yingying Jia, Fen Nie, Aiying Du, Zhangcheng Chen, Yuanbo Qin, Tao Huang, Xiaomin Song, and Lin Li*
State Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China *Correspondence to:Lin Li, E-mail: lli@sibs.ac.cn
J Mol Cell Biol, Volume 6, Issue 3, June 2014, 231-239,  https://doi.org/10.1093/jmcb/mju014
Keyword: TDG, TCF, CBP, Wnt signaling, transactivation

Thymine DNA glycosylase (TDG), an enzyme that initiates the repair of G/T and G/U mismatches, has been lately found crucial in embryonic development to maintain epigenetic stability and facilitate the active DNA demethylation. Here we report a novel role of TDG in Wnt signaling as a transcriptional coactivator of β-catenin/TCFs complex. Our data show that TDG binds to the transcriptional factor family LEF1/TCFs and potentiates β-catenin/TCFs transactivation, while TDG depletion suppresses Wnt3a-stimulated reporter activity or target gene transcription. Next, we show that CBP, a known coactivator, is also required for TDG function through forming a cooperative complex on target promoters. Moreover, there is an elevation of TDG levels in human colon cancer tissue, and knockdown of TDG inhibits proliferation of the colon cells. Overall, our results reveal that TDG, as a new coactivator, promotes β-catenin/TCFs transactivation and functionally cooperates with CBP in canonical Wnt signaling.