Mutational mechanisms of EZH2 inactivation in myeloid neoplasms

EZH2, a component of the polycomb repressive complex 2, catalyses the trimethylation of histone H3 lysine 27, a chromatin mark associated with transcriptional repression. EZH2 loss-of-function mutations are seen in myeloid neoplasms and are associated with an adverse prognosis. Missense mutations in the SET/CXC domain abrogate catalytic activity as assessed by in vitro histone methylation assays, but missense mutations clustering in the conserved DI and DII regions retain activity. To understand the role of DI and DII mutations, we initially developed a cell-based histone methylation assay to test activity in a cellular context. Murine induced pluripotent stem cells lacking EZH2 were transiently transfected with wild type or mutant EZH2 (n=15) and any resulting histone methylation was measured by flow cytometry. All DI mutations (n=5) resulted in complete or partial loss of methylation activity whilst 5/6 DII mutations retained activity. Next, we assessed the possibility of splicing abnormalities induced by exon 8 mutations (encoding DII) using RT-PCR from primary patient samples and mini-gene assays. Exon 8 mutations resulted in skipping of exon 8 and an out-of-frame transcript. We have therefore shown that mutations within regions encoding EZH2 domains DI and DII are pathogenic by loss of function and exon skipping, respectively.