Genome-wide analysis of FoxO1 binding in hepatic chromatin: Potential involvement of FoxO1 in linking retinoid signaling to hepatic gluconeogenesis

The forkhead transcription factor FoxO1 is a critical regulator of hepatic glucose and lipid metabolism, and dysregulation of FoxO1 function has been implicated in diabetes and insulin resistance. We globally identified FoxO1 occupancy in mouse hepatic chromatin on a genome-wide level by chromatin immunoprecipitation coupled with high-throughput DNA sequencing (ChIP-seq). To establish the specific functional significance of FoxO1 against other FoxO proteins, ChIP-seq was performed with chromatin from liver-specific FoxO1 knockout and wild-type mice. Here we identified 401 genome-wide FoxO1-binding locations. Motif search reveals a sequence element, 5′ GTAAACA 3′, consistent with a previously known FoxO1-binding site. Gene set enrichment analysis shows that the data from FoxO1 ChIP-seq are highly correlated with the global expression profiling of genes regulated by FoxO1, demonstrating the functional relevance of our FoxO1 ChIP-seq study. Interestingly, gene ontology analysis reveals the functional significance of FoxO1 in retinoid metabolic processes. We show here that FoxO1 directly binds to the genomic sites for the genes in retinoid metabolism. Notably, deletion of FoxO1 caused a significantly reduced induction of Pck1 and Pdk4 in response to retinoids. As Pck1 and Pdk4 are downstream targets of retinoid signaling, these results suggest that FoxO1 plays a potential role in linking retinoid metabolism to hepatic gluconeogenesis.