An intriguing characteristic of enhancer-promoter interactions

It is still challenging to predict interacting enhancer-promoter pairs (IEPs), partially because of our limited understanding of their characteristics. To understand IEPs better, here we studied the IEPs in nine cell lines and nine primary cell types. We observed that one enhancer is likely to inter...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inbioRxiv
Main Authors Talukder, Amlan, Hu, Haiyan, Li, Xiaoman
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published Cold Spring Harbor Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 25.05.2020
Subjects
Cell lines
Enhancers
Gene regulation
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:It is still challenging to predict interacting enhancer-promoter pairs (IEPs), partially because of our limited understanding of their characteristics. To understand IEPs better, here we studied the IEPs in nine cell lines and nine primary cell types. We observed that one enhancer is likely to interact with either none or all of the target genes of another enhancer. This observation implies that enhancers form clusters, and every enhancer in the same cluster synchronously interact with almost every member of a set of genes and only this set of genes. We perceived that an enhancer can be up to two mega base pairs away from other enhancers in the same cluster. We also noticed that although a fraction of these clusters of enhancers do overlap with super-enhancers, the majority of the enhancer clusters are different from the known super-enhancers. Our study showed a new characteristic of IEPs, which may shed new light on distal gene regulation and the identification of IEPs. Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.
DOI:10.1101/2020.05.24.112458