Distant cis Regulation of Myogenic Differentiation
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ABSTRACT: Identifying tissue and condition-specific gene regulatory elements and the mechanisms by which they associate with their target genes in human cells remains a significant challenge, largely due to the vast amount of non-protein-coding sequence in the human genome. Despite increasing evidence of physical interactions between distant regulatory regions and gene promoters in a variety of mammalian cell types, many searches for regulatory regions still consider only genomic regions proximal to the gene promoter. We identify a set of putative cis-regulatory modules (CRMs) of human skeletal muscle differentiation by combining new ChIP-chip data measuring the binding of myogenic TFs MyoG, MyoD, and SRF over the timecourse of differentiation with previously generated histone modification data. A substantial proportion of these putative CRMs are located distant (> 20 kb) from muscle gene promoters, and these distantly located CRMs are more likely than proximal promoter regions to show differentiation-specific changes in myogenic TF binding. Examination of two distant CRMs, which were previously shown to activate transcription in differentiating muscle cells, revealed that they interact physically with their upstream or downstream gene promoters (PDLIM3 and ACTA1) specifically upon myogenic differentiation. Our results highlight the importance of considering CRMs located distant from their target genes in investigations of mammalian gene regulation and further support the hypothesis that enhancer-promoter looping contacts are a general mechanism of regulation by distant CRMs.
ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens
PROVIDER: GSE29865 | GEO | 2012/02/01
SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA140977
REPOSITORIES: GEO
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