Abstract

The KRAB transcriptional repressor domain, commonly found in zinc finger proteins, acts by inducing the formation of heterochromatin. We previously exploited this property to achieve drug-regulated transgenesis and knock down by combining doxycycline-controllable KRAB-containing fusion proteins and lentiviral vectors. Here, we asked whether KRAB-induced repression is widespread or limited to specific regions of the genome. For this, we transduced cells with a lentiviral vector expressing a target reporter and a KRAB-containing transcriptional repressor from a bicistronic mRNA. We found that approximately 1.4% of the resulting proviruses escaped repression. However, this phenotype could be reverted by expressing the KRAB-containing protein in trans. Accordingly, the irrepressible proviruses all contained, in the DNA sequence encoding the KRAB-containing effector or its upstream internal ribosomal entry site, mutations or deletions likely resulting from errors or recombination during reverse transcription. These results indicate that KRAB-induced transcriptional repression is robust and active over a variety of genomic contexts that include at least the wide range of sites targeted by lentiviral integration.

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