The phenylalanine-and-glycine repeats of NUP98 oncofusions form condensates that selectively partition transcriptional coactivators

Cancer-associated genetic aberrations, such as the nucleoporin 98 (NUP98) gene rearrangement detected in human leukemias, often produce condensates, a type of membrane-less biomolecular assemblies. How exactly the cancer-related condensation contributes to oncogenesis remains far from clear. Here, we investigate NUP98-PHF23, a leukemia-causing chimeric protein that fuses NUP98’s sequence enriched in phenylalanine-and-glycine repeats (FG repeats, also known as intrinsically disordered region [IDR]) in-frame with PHF23’s PHD finger, a domain that specifically ‘reads’ and binds H3K4 trimethylation (H3K4me3). Our integrated analyses using protein module mutagenesis, cell imaging, genomic profiling and condensation reconstitution collectively demonstrate a multifaced role for NUP98’s FG repeats in driving fusion condensation while recruiting and co-mixing with a set of histone modifiers and chromatin remodelers, notably the MLL family of H3K4 methylation-‘writing’ enzymes. The H3K4me3-‘reading’ PHD finger and NUP98’s IDR are cooperative in mediating efficient targeting of NUP98-PHF23 and its coactivators onto leukemic genes, leading to active transcription. Together, we show that NUP98-PHF23 coordinates a set of homotypic and heterotypic interactions (IDR:IDR, IDR:coactivator and PHD:histone) to organize formation of the chromatin-bound multi-component condensates, wherein a feedforward loop involving the ‘reading’ and ‘writing’ of H3K4 methylation acts to enforce an open chromatin landscape at leukemogenic loci, thereby driving oncogenic transformation.