A systematic comparison reveals substantial differences in chromosomal versus episomal encoding of enhancer activity
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ABSTRACT: The magnitude and determinants of differences in cis-regulation for regulatory sequences residing in episomes versus chromosomes remain almost completely unknown. To address this question in a systematic manner, we developed and applied a novel lentivirus-based massively parallel reporter assay (lentiMPRA) to directly compare the functional activities of 2,236 candidate liver enhancers in an episomal versus a chromosomally integrated context. We find that the activities of chromosomally integrated sequences are substantially different from the activities of the identical sequences assayed on episomes, and furthermore are correlated with different subsets of ENCODE annotations. The results of chromosomally-based reporter assays are also more reproducible and more strongly predictable by both ENCODE annotations and sequence-based models. With a linear model that combines chromatin annotations and sequence information, we achieve a Pearson's R2 of 0.347 for predicting the results of chromosomally integrated reporter assays. This is substantially better than with either chromatin annotations or sequence information alone and also outperforms predictive models of episomal assays. Our results have broad implications for how cis-regulatory elements are identified, prioritized and functionally validated.
ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens
PROVIDER: GSE83894 | GEO | 2016/10/01
SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA327312
REPOSITORIES: GEO
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