Transcriptional repression and enhancer decommissioning silence cell cycle genes in postmitotic tissues.

The mechanisms that maintain a non-cycling status in postmitotic tissues are not well understood. Many cell cycle genes have promoters and enhancers that remain accessible even when cells are terminally differentiated and in a non-cycling state, suggesting their repression must be maintained long term. In contrast, enhancer decommissioning has been observed for rate-limiting cell cycle genes in the Drosophila wing, a tissue where the cells die soon after eclosion, but it has been unclear if this also occurs in other contexts of terminal differentiation. In this study, we show that enhancer decommissioning also occurs at specific, rate-limiting cell cycle genes in the long-lived tissues of the Drosophila eye and brain, and we propose this loss of chromatin accessibility may help maintain a robust postmitotic state. We examined the decommissioned enhancers at specific rate-limiting cell cycle genes and show that they encode dynamic temporal and spatial expression patterns that include shared, as well as tissue-specific elements, resulting in broad gene expression with developmentally controlled temporal regulation. We extend our analysis to cell cycle gene expression and chromatin accessibility in the mammalian retina using a published dataset, and find that the principles of cell cycle gene regulation identified in terminally differentiating Drosophila tissues are conserved in the differentiating mammalian retina. We propose a robust, non-cycling status is maintained in long-lived postmitotic tissues through a combination of stable repression at most cell cycle gens, alongside enhancer decommissioning at specific rate-limiting cell cycle genes. HighlightsIn long-lived postmitotic Drosophila tissues, most cell cycle genes retain accessible chromatin despite persistent transcriptional downregulation. Cell cycle genes with accessible enhancers remain activatable during terminal differentiation, suggesting their repression must be continuously maintained in the postmitotic state. Long-lived postmitotic tissues decommission enhancers at specific, rate-limiting cell cycle genes in a developmentally regulated manner. Genome-wide enhancer identification performed in cell culture misses many developmentally dynamic enhancers in vivo. Decommissioned enhancers at cell cycle genes include shared and tissue-specific elements that in combination, result in broad gene expression with temporal regulation. The principles of cell cycle gene regulation identified in Drosophila are conserved in the mammalian retina.