Chromatin regulation by BAF170 controls cerebral cortical size and thickness

Increased cortical size is essential to the enhanced intellectual capacity of primates during mammalian evolution. The mechanisms that control cortical size are largely unknown. Here, we show that mammalian BAF170, a subunit of the chromatin remodeling complex mSWI/SNF, is an intrinsic factor that controls cortical size. We find that the conditional deletion of BAF170 promotes indirect neurogenesis by increasing the pool of intermediate progenitors (IPs) and results in an enlarged cortex, whereas cortex-specific BAF170 over-expression results an opposing phenotype. Mechanistically, BAF170 competes with BAF155 subunit in the BAF complex, affecting the euchromatin structure and thereby modulating the binding efficiency of Pax6/REST-corepressor complex to Pax6 target genes that regulate the generation of IPs and late cortical progenitors. Our findings reveal a molecular mechanism mediated by the mSWI/SNF chromatin-remodeling complex that controls cortical architecture. Cortical gene expression is compared between three E12.5 mouse embryos with cortex-specific loss of BAF170 function and three littermate control embryos.