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FOXA pioneer transcription factors (TFs) associate with primed enhancers in endodermal organ precursors. Using a human stem cell model of pancreas differentiation, we here discover that only a subset of pancreatic enhancers is FOXA-primed, whereas the majority is unprimed and engages FOXA upon lineage induction. Primed enhancers are enriched for signal-dependent TF motifs and harbor abundant and strong FOXA motifs. Unprimed enhancers harbor fewer, more degenerate FOXA motifs, and FOXA recruitment to unprimed but not primed enhancers requires pancreatic TFs. Strengthening FOXA motifs at an unprimed enhancer near NKX6.1 renders FOXA recruitment pancreatic TF-independent, induces priming, and broadens the NKX6.1 expression domain. We make analogous observations about FOXA binding during hepatic and lung development. Our findings suggest a dual role for FOXA in endodermal organ development: first, FOXA facilitates signal-dependent lineage initiation via enhancer priming, and second, FOXA enforces organ cell type-specific gene expression via indirect recruitment by lineage-specific TFs., Enhancers for endodermal organs are primed at the chromatin level prior to lineage induction by FOXA pioneer transcription factors; how pervasive this is, is not well known. Here the authors show that only a small subset of organ-specific enhancers are bound and primed by FOXA prior to lineage induction, whereas the majority do not undergo chromatin priming and engage FOXA upon lineage induction.

The foundational adenine base editors (for example, ABE7.10) enable programmable A•T to G•C point mutations but editing efficiencies can be low at challenging loci in primary human cells. Here we further evolve ABE7.10 using a library of adenosine deaminase variants to create ABE8s. At NGG protospacer adjacent motif (PAM) sites, ABE8s result in ~1.5× higher editing at protospacer positions A5-A7 and ~3.2× higher editing at positions A3-A4 and A8-A10 compared with ABE7.10. Non-NGG PAM variants have a ~4.2-fold overall higher on-target editing efficiency than ABE7.10. In human CD34+ cells, ABE8 can recreate a natural allele at the promoter of the γ-globin genes HBG1 and HBG2 with up to 60% efficiency, causing persistence of fetal hemoglobin. In primary human T cells, ABE8s achieve 98-99% target modification, which is maintained when multiplexed across three loci. Delivered as messenger RNA, ABE8s induce no significant levels of single guide RNA (sgRNA)-independent off-target adenine deamination in genomic DNA and very low levels of adenine deamination in cellular mRNA.

SUMMARYFOXA pioneer transcription factors (TFs) displace nucleosomes and prime chromatin across enhancers of different endodermal organs in multipotent precursors before lineage induction. Here, we examined patterns and mechanisms of FOXA target site engagement using human pluripotent stem cell models of endodermal organ development. Unexpectedly, we find that only a subset of pancreatic, hepatic, and alveolar enhancers are FOXA-primed, whereas the majority are unprimed and engage FOXA only upon lineage induction. Analysis of sequence architecture revealed more abundant and stronger FOXA motifs at primed than unprimed enhancers and enrichment for lineage-specific TF motifs at unprimed enhancers. We show that FOXA recruitment to unprimed enhancers specifically depends on lineage-specific TFs, suggesting that regulatory DNA sequence logic governs temporal FOXA recruitment. Our findings suggest that FOXA-mediated enhancer priming broadly facilitates initiation of organ lineage programs, while secondary FOXA recruitment by lineage-specific TFs to the majority of enhancers confers organ specificity to gene expression.

SummaryEmbryonic development relies on the capacity of progenitor cells to appropriately respond to inductive cues, a cellular property known as developmental competence. Here, we report that epigenetic priming of enhancers signifies developmental competence during endodermal lineage diversification. Chromatin mapping during pancreatic and hepatic differentiation of human embryonic stem cells revealed the en masse acquisition of a poised chromatin state at enhancers specific to endoderm-derived cell lineages in gut tube intermediates. Experimentally, the acquisition of this poised enhancer state predicts the ability of endodermal intermediates to respond to inductive signals. Furthermore, these enhancers are first recognized by the pioneer transcription factors FOXA1 and FOXA2 when competence is acquired, while subsequent recruitment of lineage-inductive transcription factors, such as PDX1, leads to enhancer and target gene activation. Together, our results identify the acquisition of a poised chromatin state at enhancers as a mechanism by which progenitor cells acquire developmental competence.