FoxH1 represses miR-430 during early embryonic development of zebrafish via non-canonical regulation

BACKGROUND: FoxH1 is a forkhead transcription factor with conserved key functions in vertebrate mesoderm induction and left-right patterning downstream of the TGF-beta/Nodal signaling pathway. Binding of the forkhead domain (FHD) of FoxH1 to a highly conserved proximal sequence motif was shown to regulate target gene expression. RESULTS: We identify the conserved microRNA-430 family (miR-430) as a novel target of FoxH1. miR-430 levels are increased in foxH1 mutants, resulting in a reduced expression of transcripts that are targeted by miR-430 for degradation. To determine the underlying mechanism of miR-430 repression, we performed chromatin immunoprecipitation studies and overexpression experiments with mutant as well as constitutive active and repressive forms of FoxH1. Our studies reveal a molecular interaction of FoxH1 with miR-430 loci independent of the FHD. Furthermore, we show that previously described mutant forms of FoxH1 that disrupt DNA binding or that lack the C-terminal Smad Interaction Domain (SID) dominantly interfere with miR-430 repression, but not with the regulation of previously described FoxH1 targets. CONCLUSIONS: We were able to identify the distinct roles of protein domains of FoxH1 in the regulation process of miR-430. We provide evidence that the indirect repression of miR-430 loci depends on the connection to a distal repressive chromosome environment via a non-canonical mode. The widespread distribution of such non-canonical binding sites of FoxH1, found not only in our study, argues against a function restricted to regulating miR-430 and for a more global role of FoxH1 in chromatin folding. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12915-019-0683-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.