Project description:Promoters initiate RNA synthesis, and enhancers stimulate promoter activity. Whether promoter and enhancer activities are encoded distinctly in DNA sequences is unknown. We measured the enhancer and promoter activities of thousands of DNA fragments transduced into mouse neurons. We focused on genomic loci bound by the neuronal activity-regulated co-activator CREBBP, and we measured enhancer and promoter activities both before and after neuronal activation. We find that the same sequences typically encode both enhancer and promoter activities. However, gene promoters generate more promoter activity than distal enhancers, despite generating similar enhancer activity. Surprisingly, the greater promoter activity of gene promoters is not due to conventional core promoter elements or splicing signals. Instead, we find that particular transcription factor binding motifs are intrinsically biased toward the generation of promoter activity, while others are not. While the specific biases we observe may be dependent on experimental or cellular context, our results suggest that gene promoters are distinguished from distal enhancers by specific complements of transcriptional activators.
Project description:The functional organization of eukaryotic genomes correlates with specific patterns of histone methylations. Regulatory regions in genomes like enhancers and promoters differ in their extent of methylation of histone H3 at lysine-4 (H3K4), but it is largely unknown how the different methylation states are specified and controlled. Here, we show that the Kdm5c/Jarid1c/SMCX member of the Kdm5 family of H3K4 demethylases can be recruited to both enhancer and promoter elements in embryonic stem cells and neuronal progenitor cells via gene-specific transcription factors. Knockdown of Kdm5c deregulates transcription via local increases in H3K4me3. Our data show that restricting H3K4me3 modification at core promoters dampens transcription, but Kdm5c is required at enhancers for their full activity. Remarkably, an impaired enhancer function activates the intrinsic promoter activity of Kdm5c-bound distal elements. Our results demonstrate that the Kdm5c demethylase plays a crucial and dynamic role in the functional discrimination between enhancers and core promoters. RNA from four independent cultures from each sh Kdm5c #1, sh Kdm5c #2 and non-targeting shRNA polyclonal cell lines were hybridized in dye-swap against a common reference of RNA from IB10 ES cells.
Project description:The functional organization of eukaryotic genomes correlates with specific patterns of histone methylations. Regulatory regions in genomes like enhancers and promoters differ in their extent of methylation of histone H3 at lysine-4 (H3K4), but it is largely unknown how the different methylation states are specified and controlled. Here, we show that the Kdm5c/Jarid1c/SMCX member of the Kdm5 family of H3K4 demethylases can be recruited to both enhancer and promoter elements in embryonic stem cells and neuronal progenitor cells via gene-specific transcription factors. Knockdown of Kdm5c deregulates transcription via local increases in H3K4me3. Our data show that restricting H3K4me3 modification at core promoters dampens transcription, but Kdm5c is required at enhancers for their full activity. Remarkably, an impaired enhancer function activates the intrinsic promoter activity of Kdm5c-bound distal elements. Our results demonstrate that the Kdm5c demethylase plays a crucial and dynamic role in the functional discrimination between enhancers and core promoters.
Project description:Remote enhancers are thought to interact with their target promoters via physical proximity, yet the importance of this proximity for enhancer function remains unclear. Here, we investigate the 3D conformation of enhancers during mammalian development by generating high-resolution tissue-resolved contact maps for nearly a thousand enhancers with characterized in vivo activities in ten murine embryonic tissues. 61% of developmental enhancers bypass their neighboring genes, which are often marked by promoter CpG methylation. The majority of enhancers display tissue-specific 3D conformations, and both enhancer–promoter and enhancer–enhancer interactions are moderately but consistently increased upon enhancer activation in vivo. Less than 14% of enhancer–promoter interactions form stably across tissues; however, these invariant interactions form in the absence of the enhancer and are likely mediated by adjacent CTCF binding. Our results highlight the general significance of enhancer–promoter physical proximity for developmental gene activation in mammals.
Project description:The study uncovers epigenomic changes associated with dexamethasone response heterogeneity in myeloma cells, revealing rewired promoter-enhancer interactions and DNA loop stabilization
Project description:Enhancers harbor instructions encoded for the interactions between cis-elements and transcription factors to orchestrate lineage specific gene programs. Here we developed a modified method for chromosome conformation capture (3C), named MID Hi-C, to reveal how in mouse embryonic stem cells differential cooperation of enhancers and the chromatin remodeler BAF, as instructed by the underlying transcription factor motifs, modulate enhancer-promoter communication. We show that BAF-dependent enhancers permit genomic interactions beyond enhancer boundaries. BAF-dependent enhancers do not dictate genomic interactions within enhancer-promoter loop domains but rather act to instruct remote enhancer-promoter communication. In contrast, BAF-independent enhancers interact with promoter regions within tightly insulated enhancer-promoter loop domains that are marked by promoter and enhancer boundary elements. In addition, enhancer activeness modulated by BAF enforces compartment segregation. Based on these observations, we propose that enhancer cis elements instruct with great precision BAF-induced enhancer-promoter communication and compartmental segregation.
Project description:Substantial evidence supports the hypothesis that enhancers are critical regulators of cell type determination, orchestrating both positive and negative transcriptional programs; however, the basic mechanisms by which enhancers orchestrate interactions with cognate promoters during activation and repression events remain incompletely understood. Here we report the required actions of the LIM domain binding protein, LDB1/CLIM2/NLI, interacting with the enhancer binding protein, ASCL1, to mediate looping to target gene promoters and target gene regulation in corticotrope cells. LDB1-mediated enhancer:promoter looping appears to be required for both activation and repression of these target target gene promoter genes. While LDB1-dependend activated genes are regulated at the level of transcriptional initiation, the LDB1-dependent repressed transcription units appear to be regulated primarily at the level of promoter pausing, with LDB1 regulating recruitment of MTA2, a component of the NuRD complex, on these negative enhancers, required for the repressive enhancer function. These results indicate that LDB1-dependent looping events can deliver repressive cargo to cognate promoters to mediate promoter pausing events in a pituitary cell type. ChIP assay followed by high throughput sequencing (ChIP-seq)
Project description:Substantial evidence supports the hypothesis that enhancers are critical regulators of cell type determination, orchestrating both positive and negative transcriptional programs; however, the basic mechanisms by which enhancers orchestrate interactions with cognate promoters during activation and repression events remain incompletely understood. Here we report the required actions of the LIM domain binding protein, LDB1/CLIM2/NLI, interacting with the enhancer binding protein, ASCL1, to mediate looping to target gene promoters and target gene regulation in corticotrope cells. LDB1-mediated enhancer:promoter looping appears to be required for both activation and repression of these target target gene promoter genes. While LDB1-dependend activated genes are regulated at the level of transcriptional initiation, the LDB1-dependent repressed transcription units appear to be regulated primarily at the level of promoter pausing, with LDB1 regulating recruitment of MTA2, a component of the NuRD complex, on these negative enhancers, required for the repressive enhancer function. These results indicate that LDB1-dependent looping events can deliver repressive cargo to cognate promoters to mediate promoter pausing events in a pituitary cell type. Global Run On (GRO) assay followed by high throughput sequencing (GRO-seq)