Project description:Analysis of p53 binding sites using multiplex enhancer reporter assays, ChIP-seq data and RNA-seq data. Transcription factors establish and maintain the specific transcriptome of a cell by binding to genomic regulatory regions, thereby regulating the transcription of their target genes. Like many transcription factors, the DNA sequence-specific binding preferences of p53 are known. However, it remains largely unclear what distinguishes functional enhancers from other bound genomic regions that have no regulatory activity. In addition, the genome is scattered with seemingly perfect recognition sequences that remain unoccupied. To disentangle the rules of genome-wide p53 binding, we employed two complementary techniques of multiplex enhancer-reporter assays, one using barcoded reporters and the other using enhancer self-transcription. We compared the activity of more than one thousand candidate p53 enhancers under loss and gain of p53 conditions and identified several hundred high-confidence p53-responsive enhancers. Strikingly, the large majority (99%) of these target enhancers can be characterized and distinguished from negative sequences by the occurrence of a single p53 binding site. By training a machine learning classifier on these data, and integrating the resulting genome-wide predictions with fifteen publicly available human p53 ChIP-seq data sets, we identified a consensus set of 1148 functional p53 binding sites in the human genome. Unexpectedly, this direct p53 cistrome is invariably used between cell types and experimental conditions, while differences between experiments can be largely attributed to indirect non-functional binding. Our data suggest that direct p53 enhancers function in a context-independent manner and do not contain obvious combinatorial complexity of binding sites for multiple transcription factors. They represent a class of unsophisticated cell-autonomous enhancers with a single binding site, distinct from complex developmental enhancers that integrate signals from multiple transcription factors. This suggests that context-dependent regulation of p53 target genes is not encoded in the p53 enhancer, but at different upstream or downstream layers of the cell's gene regulatory network.

Project description:<p>Non-coding elements in our genomes that play critical roles in complex disease are frequently marked by highly unstable RNA species. Sequencing nascent RNAs attached to an actively transcribing RNA polymerase complex can identify unstable RNAs, including those templated from gene-distal enhancers (eRNAs). However, nascent RNA sequencing techniques remain challenging to apply in some cell lines and especially to intact tissues, limiting broad applications in fields such as cancer genomics and personalized medicine. Here we report the development of chromatin run-on and sequencing (ChRO-seq), a novel run-on technology that maps the location of RNA polymerase using virtually any frozen tissue sample, including samples with degraded RNA that are intractable to conventional RNA-seq. We used ChRO-seq to develop the first maps of nascent transcription in 23 human glioblastoma (GBM) brain tumors and patient derived xenografts. Remarkably, >90,000 distal enhancers discovered using the signature of eRNA biogenesis within primary GBMs closely resemble those found in the normal human brain, and diverge substantially from GBM cell models. Despite extensive overall similarity, 12% of enhancers in each GBM distinguish normal and malignant brain tissue. These enhancers drive regulatory programs similar to the developing nervous system and are enriched for transcription factor binding sites that specify a stem-like cell fate. These results demonstrate that GBMs largely retain the enhancer landscape associated with their tissue of origin, but selectively adopt regulatory programs that are responsible for driving stem-like cell properties. We also identified enhancers and their associated transcription factors that regulate genes characteristic of each known GBM subtype, and discovered a core group of transcription factors that control the expression of genes associated with clinical outcomes. This study uncovers new insights into the molecular etiology of GBM and introduces ChRO-seq which can now be used to map regulatory programs contributing to a variety of complex diseases.</p>

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Multiplex enhancer-reporter assays uncover unsophisticated p53 enhancer logic [STARR-seq]

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