Browse
Submit Data
Databases
API
Help

Dataset Information

20 Views

0 Connections

0 Citations

0 Reanalyses

0 Downloads

Omics score: 0

Transcriptional features of genomic regulatory blocks.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Genomic regulatory blocks (GRBs) are chromosomal regions spanned by highly conserved non-coding elements (HCNEs), most of which serve as regulatory inputs of one target gene in the region. The target genes are most often transcription factors involved in embryonic development and differentiation. GRBs often contain extensive gene deserts, as well as additional 'bystander' genes intertwined with HCNEs but whose expression and function are unrelated to those of the target gene. The tight regulation of target genes, complex arrangement of regulatory inputs, and the differential responsiveness of genes in the region call for the examination of fundamental rules governing transcriptional activity in GRBs. Here we use extensive CAGE tag mapping of transcription start sites across different human tissues and differentiation stages combined with expression data and a number of sequence and epigenetic features to discover these rules and patterns.

Results

We show evidence that GRB target genes have properties that set them apart from their bystanders as well as other genes in the genome: longer CpG islands, a higher number and wider spacing of alternative transcription start sites, and a distinct composition of transcription factor binding sites in their core/proximal promoters. Target gene expression correlates with the acetylation state of HCNEs in the region. Additionally, target gene promoters have a distinct combination of activating and repressing histone modifications in mouse embryonic stem cell lines.

Conclusions

GRB targets are genes with a number of unique features that are the likely cause of their ability to respond to regulatory inputs from very long distances.

SUBMITTER: Akalin A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2688929 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Json Xml

Similar Datasets

Genomic regulatory blocks underlie extensive microsynteny conservation in insects.

Project description:Insect genomes contain larger blocks of conserved gene order (microsynteny) than would be expected under a random breakage model of chromosome evolution. We present evidence that microsynteny has been retained to keep large arrays of highly conserved noncoding elements (HCNEs) intact. These arrays span key developmental regulatory genes, forming genomic regulatory blocks (GRBs). We recently described GRBs in vertebrates, where most HCNEs function as enhancers and HCNE arrays specify complex expression programs of their target genes. Here we present a comparison of five Drosophila genomes showing that HCNE density peaks centrally in large synteny blocks containing multiple genes. Besides developmental regulators that are likely targets of HCNE enhancers, HCNE arrays often span unrelated neighboring genes. We describe differences in core promoters between the target genes and the unrelated genes that offer an explanation for the differences in their responsiveness to enhancers. We show examples of a striking correspondence between boundaries of synteny blocks, HCNE arrays, and Polycomb binding regions, confirming that the synteny blocks correspond to regulatory domains. Although few noncoding elements are highly conserved between Drosophila and the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae, we find that A. gambiae regions orthologous to Drosophila GRBs contain an equivalent distribution of noncoding elements highly conserved in the yellow fever mosquito Aëdes aegypti and coincide with regions of ancient microsynteny between Drosophila and mosquitoes. The structural and functional equivalence between insect and vertebrate GRBs marks them as an ancient feature of metazoan genomes and as a key to future studies of development and gene regulation.

| S-EPMC2099597 | biostudies-literature

Ancient Genomic Regulatory Blocks Are a Source for Regulatory Gene Deserts in Vertebrates after Whole-Genome Duplications.

Project description:We investigated how the two rounds of whole-genome duplication that occurred at the base of the vertebrate lineage have impacted ancient microsyntenic associations involving developmental regulators (known as genomic regulatory blocks, GRBs). We showed that the majority of GRBs identified in the last common ancestor of chordates have been maintained as a single copy in humans. We found evidence that dismantling of the duplicated GRB copies occurred early in vertebrate evolution often through the differential retention of the regulatory gene but loss of the bystander gene's exonic sequences. Despite the large evolutionary scale, the presence of duplicated highly conserved noncoding regions provided unambiguous proof for this scenario for multiple ancient GRBs. Remarkably, the dismantling of ancient GRB duplicates has contributed to the creation of large gene deserts associated with regulatory genes in vertebrates, providing a potentially widespread mechanism for the origin of these enigmatic genomic traits.

| S-EPMC7530604 | biostudies-literature

Genomic regulatory blocks encompass multiple neighboring genes and maintain conserved synteny in vertebrates.

Project description:We report evidence for a mechanism for the maintenance of long-range conserved synteny across vertebrate genomes. We found the largest mammal-teleost conserved chromosomal segments to be spanned by highly conserved noncoding elements (HCNEs), their developmental regulatory target genes, and phylogenetically and functionally unrelated "bystander" genes. Bystander genes are not specifically under the control of the regulatory elements that drive the target genes and are expressed in patterns that are different from those of the target genes. Reporter insertions distal to zebrafish developmental regulatory genes pax6.1/2, rx3, id1, and fgf8 and miRNA genes mirn9-1 and mirn9-5 recapitulate the expression patterns of these genes even if located inside or beyond bystander genes, suggesting that the regulatory domain of a developmental regulatory gene can extend into and beyond adjacent transcriptional units. We termed these chromosomal segments genomic regulatory blocks (GRBs). After whole genome duplication in teleosts, GRBs, including HCNEs and target genes, were often maintained in both copies, while bystander genes were typically lost from one GRB, strongly suggesting that evolutionary pressure acts to keep the single-copy GRBs of higher vertebrates intact. We show that loss of bystander genes and other mutational events suffered by duplicated GRBs in teleost genomes permits target gene identification and HCNE/target gene assignment. These findings explain the absence of evolutionary breakpoints from large vertebrate chromosomal segments and will aid in the recognition of position effect mutations within human GRBs.

| S-EPMC1855176 | biostudies-literature

Understanding the genetics of neuropsychiatric disorders: the potential role of genomic regulatory blocks.

Project description:Recent genome-wide association studies have identified numerous loci associated with neuropsychiatric disorders. The majority of these are in non-coding regions, and are commonly assigned to the nearest gene along the genome. However, this approach neglects the three-dimensional organisation of the genome, and the fact that the genome contains arrays of extremely conserved non-coding elements termed genomic regulatory blocks (GRBs), which can be utilized to detect genes under long-range developmental regulation. Here we review a GRB-based approach to assign loci in non-coding regions to potential target genes, and apply it to reanalyse the results of one of the largest schizophrenia GWAS (SWG PGC, 2014). We further apply this approach to GWAS data from two related neuropsychiatric disorders-autism spectrum disorder and bipolar disorder-to show that it is applicable to developmental disorders in general. We find that disease-associated SNPs are overrepresented in GRBs and that the GRB model is a powerful tool for linking these SNPs to their correct target genes under long-range regulation. Our analysis identifies novel genes not previously implicated in schizophrenia and corroborates a number of predicted targets from the original study. The results are available as an online resource in which the genomic context and the strength of enhancer-promoter associations can be browsed for each schizophrenia-associated SNP.

| S-EPMC6906185 | biostudies-literature

Comparative genomic reconstruction of transcriptional regulatory networks in bacteria.

Project description: Not available

| S-EPMC2643304 | biostudies-literature

Genomic reconstruction of transcriptional regulatory networks in lactic acid bacteria.

Project description:BACKGROUND: Genome scale annotation of regulatory interactions and reconstruction of regulatory networks are the crucial problems in bacterial genomics. The Lactobacillales order of bacteria collates various microorganisms having a large economic impact, including both human and animal pathogens and strains used in the food industry. Nonetheless, no systematic genome-wide analysis of transcriptional regulation has been previously made for this taxonomic group. RESULTS: A comparative genomics approach was used for reconstruction of transcriptional regulatory networks in 30 selected genomes of lactic acid bacteria. The inferred networks comprise regulons for 102 orthologous transcription factors (TFs), including 47 novel regulons for previously uncharacterized TFs. Numerous differences between regulatory networks of the Streptococcaceae and Lactobacillaceae groups were described on several levels. The two groups are characterized by substantially different sets of TFs encoded in their genomes. Content of the inferred regulons and structure of their cognate TF binding motifs differ for many orthologous TFs between the two groups. Multiple cases of non-orthologous displacements of TFs that control specific metabolic pathways were reported. CONCLUSIONS: The reconstructed regulatory networks substantially expand the existing knowledge of transcriptional regulation in lactic acid bacteria. In each of 30 studied genomes the obtained regulatory network contains on average 36 TFs and 250 target genes that are mostly involved in carbohydrate metabolism, stress response, metal homeostasis and amino acids biosynthesis. The inferred networks can be used for genetic experiments, functional annotations of genes, metabolic reconstruction and evolutionary analysis. All reconstructed regulons are captured within the Streptococcaceae and Lactobacillaceae collections in the RegPrecise database (http://regprecise.lbl.gov).

| S-EPMC3616900 | biostudies-other

Comparative analysis reveals genomic features of stress-induced transcriptional readthrough.

Project description:Transcription is a highly regulated process, and stress-induced changes in gene transcription have been shown to play a major role in stress responses and adaptation. Genome-wide studies reveal prevalent transcription beyond known protein-coding gene loci, generating a variety of RNA classes, most of unknown function. One such class, termed downstream of gene-containing transcripts (DoGs), was reported to result from transcriptional readthrough upon osmotic stress in human cells. However, how widespread the readthrough phenomenon is, and what its causes and consequences are, remain elusive. Here we present a genome-wide mapping of transcriptional readthrough, using nuclear RNA-Seq, comparing heat shock, osmotic stress, and oxidative stress in NIH 3T3 mouse fibroblast cells. We observe massive induction of transcriptional readthrough, both in levels and length, under all stress conditions, with significant, yet not complete, overlap of readthrough-induced loci between different conditions. Importantly, our analyses suggest that stress-induced transcriptional readthrough is not a random failure process, but is rather differentially induced across different conditions. We explore potential regulators and find a role for HSF1 in the induction of a subset of heat shock-induced readthrough transcripts. Analysis of public datasets detected increases in polymerase II occupancy in DoG regions after heat shock, supporting our findings. Interestingly, DoGs tend to be produced in the vicinity of neighboring genes, leading to a marked increase in their antisense-generating potential. Finally, we examine genomic features of readthrough transcription and observe a unique chromatin signature typical of DoG-producing regions, suggesting that readthrough transcription is associated with the maintenance of an open chromatin state.

| S-EPMC5635911 | biostudies-literature

Alpha TC1 and Beta-TC-6 genomic profiling uncovers both shared and distinct transcriptional regulatory features with their primary islet counterparts.

Project description:Alpha TC1 (αTC1) and Beta-TC-6 (βTC6) mouse islet cell lines are cellular models of islet (dys)function and type 2 diabetes (T2D). However, genomic characteristics of these cells, and their similarities to primary islet alpha and beta cells, are undefined. Here, we report the epigenomic (ATAC-seq) and transcriptomic (RNA-seq) landscapes of αTC1 and βTC6 cells. Each cell type exhibits hallmarks of its primary islet cell counterpart including cell-specific expression of beta (e.g., Pdx1) and alpha (e.g., Arx) cell transcription factors (TFs), and enrichment of binding motifs for these TFs in αTC1/βTC6 cis-regulatory elements. αTC1/βTC6 transcriptomes overlap significantly with the transcriptomes of primary mouse/human alpha and beta cells. Our data further indicate that ATAC-seq detects cell-specific regulatory elements for cell types comprising ≥ 20% of a mixed cell population. We identified αTC1/βTC6 cis-regulatory elements orthologous to those containing type 2 diabetes (T2D)-associated SNPs in human islets for 33 loci, suggesting these cells' utility to dissect T2D molecular genetics in these regions. Together, these maps provide important insights into the conserved regulatory architecture between αTC1/βTC6 and primary islet cells that can be leveraged in functional (epi)genomic approaches to dissect the genetic and molecular factors controlling islet cell identity and function.

| S-EPMC5607285 | biostudies-literature

A novel measure of non-coding genome conservation identifies genomic regulatory blocks within primates.

Project description:MotivationClusters of extremely conserved non-coding elements (CNEs) mark genomic regions devoted to cis-regulation of key developmental genes in Metazoa. We have recently shown that their span coincides with that of topologically associating domains (TADs), making them useful for estimating conserved TAD boundaries in the absence of Hi-C data. The standard approach-detecting CNEs in genome alignments and then establishing the boundaries of their clusters-requires tuning of several parameters and breaks down when comparing closely related genomes.ResultsWe present a novel, kurtosis-based measure of pairwise non-coding conservation that requires no pre-set thresholds for conservation level and length of CNEs. We show that it performs robustly across a large span of evolutionary distances, including across the closely related genomes of primates for which standard approaches fail. The method is straightforward to implement and enables detection and comparison of clusters of CNEs and estimation of underlying TADs across a vastly increased range of Metazoan genomes.Availability and implementationThe data generated for this study, and the scripts used to generate the data, can be found at https://github.com/alexander-nash/kurtosis_conservation.Supplementary informationSupplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

| S-EPMC6612856 | biostudies-literature

Assessing regulatory features of the current transcriptional network of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Project description:The capacity of living cells to adapt to different environmental, sometimes adverse, conditions is achieved through differential gene expression, which in turn is controlled by a highly complex transcriptional network. We recovered the full network of transcriptional regulatory associations currently known for Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as gathered in the latest release of the YEASTRACT database. We assessed topological features of this network filtered by the kind of supporting evidence and of previously published networks. It appears that in-degree distribution, as well as motif enrichment evolve as the yeast transcriptional network is being completed. Overall, our analyses challenged some results previously published and confirmed others. These analyses further pointed towards the paucity of experimental evidence to support theories and, more generally, towards the partial knowledge of the complete network.

| S-EPMC7575604 | biostudies-literature

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

OmicsDI is an Elixir interoperability service. Learn more ›

Tweets

OmicsDI Databases

PRIDE
PeptideAtlas
MassIVE
JPOST Repository
Physiome Model Repository

EGA
EVA
ENA
LINCS
PAXDB
Cell Collective

MetaboLights
Metabolomics Workbench
MetabolomeExpress
GNPS
BioModels
FAIRDOMHub

ArrayExpress
dbGaP
ExpressionAtlas
GEO
NODE

Information

Databases
Help
API
Contact us
Code on GitHub
Terms of use
Submit Data