Suppression of Sin3A activity promotes differentiation of pluripotent cells into functional neurons

Sin3 is a transcriptional corepressor for REST silencing machinery that represses multiple neuronal genes in non-neuronal cells. However, functions of Sin3 (Sin3A and Sin3B) in suppression of neuronal phenotypes are not well characterized. Herein we show that Sin3A knockdown impedes the repressive activity of REST and enhances differentiation of pluripotent P19 cells into electrophysiologically active neurons without inducing astrogenesis. It is also found that silencing Sin3B induces neurogenesis of P19 cells with a lower efficiency than Sin3A knockdown. The results suggest that Sin3A has a more profound effect on REST repressive machinery for silencing neuronal genes in P19 cells than Sin3B. Furthermore, we show that a peptide inhibitor of Sin3A-REST interactions promotes differentiation of P19 cells into functional neurons. Observations made in studies using genetic deletion and a synthetic inhibitor suggests that Sin3A plays an important role in the repression of neuronal genes by the REST regulatory mechanism.