Description
The peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor co-activator 1 (PGC-1) coordinates the transcriptional network response to promote an improved endurance capacity in skeletal muscle, e.g. by co-activating the estrogen-related receptor (ERR) in the regulation of oxidative substrate metabolism. Despite a close functional relationship, the interaction between these two proteins has not been studied on a genomic level. We now mapped the genome-wide binding of ERR to DNA in skeletal muscle cell line with elevated PGC-1 and linked the DNA recruitment to global PGC-1 target gene regulation. We found that, surprisingly, ERR co-activation by PGC-1 is only observed in the minority of all PGC-1 recruitment sites. Nevertheless, a majority of PGC-1 target gene expression is dependent on ERR. Intriguingly, the interaction between these two proteins is controlled by the genomic context of response elements, in particular the relative GC and CpG content, monomeric and dimeric repeat binding site configuration for ERR, and adjacent recruitment of the transcription factor SP1. These findings thus not only reveal an unprecedented insight into the regulatory network underlying muscle cell plasticity, but also strongly link the genomic context of DNA response elements to control transcription factor - co-regulator interactions.