The intratumor microenvironment generates phenotypically distinct but interconvertible malignant cell subpopulations that fuel metastatic spread and therapeutic resistance. Whether different microenvironmental cues impose invasive or therapy-resistant phenotypes via a common mechanism is unknown. In melanoma, low expression of the lineage survival oncogene microphthalmia-associated transcription factor (MITF) correlates with invasion, senescence, and drug resistance. However, how MITF is suppressed in vivo and how MITF-low cells in tumors escape senescence are poorly understood. Here we show that microenvironmental cues, including inflammation-mediated resistance to adoptive T-cell immunotherapy, transcriptionally repress MITF via ATF4 in response to inhibition of translation initiation factor eIF2B. ATF4, a key transcription mediator of the integrated stress response, also activates AXL and suppresses senescence to impose the MITF-low/AXL-high drug-resistant phenotype observed in human tumors. However, unexpectedly, without translation reprogramming an ATF4-high/MITF-low state is insufficient to drive invasion. Importantly, translation reprogramming dramatically enhances tumorigenesis and is linked to a previously unexplained gene expression program associated with anti-PD-1 immunotherapy resistance. Since we show that inhibition of eIF2B also drives neural crest migration and yeast invasiveness, our results suggest that translation reprogramming, an evolutionarily conserved starvation response, has been hijacked by microenvironmental stress signals in melanoma to drive phenotypic plasticity and invasion and determine therapeutic outcome.

The mechanisms by which arterial fate is established and maintained are not clearly understood. Although a number of signaling pathways and transcriptional regulators have been implicated in arterio-venous differentiation, none are essential for arterial formation, and the manner in which widely expressed factors may achieve arterial-specific gene regulation is unclear. Using both mouse and zebrafish models, we demonstrate here that arterial specification is regulated combinatorially by Notch signaling and SoxF transcription factors, via direct transcriptional gene activation. Through the identification and characterization of two arterial endothelial cell-specific gene enhancers for the Notch ligand Delta-like ligand 4 (Dll4) , we show that arterial Dll4 expression requires the direct binding of both the RBPJ/Notch intracellular domain and SOXF transcription factors. Specific combinatorial, but not individual, loss of SOXF and RBPJ DNA binding ablates all Dll4 enhancer-transgene expression despite the presence of multiple functional ETS binding sites, as does knockdown of sox7 ; sox18 in combination with loss of Notch signaling. Furthermore, triple knockdown of sox7 , sox18 and rbpj also results in ablation of endogenous dll4 expression. Fascinatingly, this combinatorial ablation leads to a loss of arterial markers and the absence of a detectable dorsal aorta, demonstrating the essential roles of SoxF and Notch, together, in the acquisition of arterial identity.