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Regulatory regions harbor multiple transcription factor (TF) recognition sites; however, the contribution of individual sites to regulatory function remains challenging to define. We describe an approach that exploits the error-prone nature of genome editing-induced double-strand break repair to map functional elements within regulatory DNA at nucleotide resolution. We demonstrate the approach on a human erythroid enhancer, revealing single TF recognition sites that gate the majority of downstream regulatory function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To study the evolutionary dynamics of regulatory DNA, we mapped >1.3 million deoxyribonuclease I--hypersensitive sites (DHSs) in 45 mouse cell and tissue types, and systematically compared these with human DHS maps from orthologous compartments. We found that the mouse and human genomes have undergone extensive cis-regulatory rewiring that combines branch-specific evolutionary innovation and loss with widespread repurposing of conserved DHSs to alternative cell fates, and that this process is mediated by turnover of transcription factor (TF) recognition elements. Despite pervasive evolutionary remodeling of the location and content of individual cis-regulatory regions, within orthologous mouse and human cell types the global fraction of regulatory DNA bases encoding recognition sites for each TF has been strictly conserved. Our findings provide new insights into the evolutionary forces shaping mammalian regulatory DNA landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is currently not possible to resolve the genome-wide relationship of transcription factors (TFs) and nucleosomes at the level of individual chromatin templates despite rapidly increasing data on TF and nucleosome occupancy in the human genome. Here we describe DNase I-released fragment-length analysis of hypersensitivity (DNase-FLASH), an approach that directly couples mapping of TF occupancy, via quantification of DNA microfragments released from individual TF recognition sites in regulatory DNA, to the surrounding nucleosome architecture, via analysis of larger DNA fragments, in a single assay. DNase-FLASH enables coupling of individual TF footprints to nucleosome occupancy, identifying TFs that precisely demarcate the regulatory DNA-nucleosome interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulatory factor binding to genomic DNA protects the underlying sequence from cleavage by DNase I, leaving nucleotide-resolution footprints. Using genomic DNase I footprinting across 41 diverse cell and tissue types, we detected 45 million transcription factor occupancy events within regulatory regions, representing differential binding to 8.4 million distinct short sequence elements. Here we show that this small genomic sequence compartment, roughly twice the size of the exome, encodes an expansive repertoire of conserved recognition sequences for DNA-binding proteins that nearly doubles the size of the human cis-regulatory lexicon. We find that genetic variants affecting allelic chromatin states are concentrated in footprints, and that these elements are preferentially sheltered from DNA methylation. High-resolution DNase I cleavage patterns mirror nucleotide-level evolutionary conservation and track the crystallographic topography of protein-DNA interfaces, indicating that transcription factor structure has been evolutionarily imprinted on the human genome sequence. We identify a stereotyped 50-base-pair footprint that precisely defines the site of transcript origination within thousands of human promoters. Finally, we describe a large collection of novel regulatory factor recognition motifs that are highly conserved in both sequence and function, and exhibit cell-selective occupancy patterns that closely parallel major regulators of development, differentiation and pluripotency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inmammals, the cytosine inCGdinucleotides is typically methylated producing 5-methylcytosine (5mC), a chemically less stable form of cytosine that can spontaneously deaminate to thymidine resulting in a T•G mismatched base pair. Unlike other eukaryotes that efficiently repair this mismatched base pair back to C•G, in mammals, 5mCG deamination is mutagenic, sometimes producing TG dinucleotides, explaining the depletion of CG dinucleotides in mammalian genomes. It was suggested that new TG dinucleotides generate genetic diversity that may be critical for evolutionary change. We tested this conjecture by examining the DNA sequence properties of regulatory sequences identified by DNase I hypersensitive sites (DHSs) in humanandmouse genomes. We hypothesized that the newTG dinucleotides generate transcription factor binding sites (TFBS) that become tissue-specificDHSs (TS-DHSs).We find that 8-mers containing the CG dinucleotide are enriched in DHSs in both species. However, 8-mers containing a TG and no CG dinucleotide are preferentially enriched in TS-DHSs when compared with 8-mers with neither a TG nor a CG dinucleotide. Themost enriched 8-mer with a TG and no CG dinucleotide in tissue-specific regulatory regions in both genomes is the AP-1 motif (TGA C/G TCAN), and we find evidence that TG dinucleotides in the AP-1 motif arose from CG dinucleotides. Additional TS-DHS-enriched TFBS containing the TG/CA dinucleotide are the E-Box motif (GCAGCTGC), the NF-1 motif (GGCA--TGCC), and the GR (glucocorticoid receptor) motif (G-ACA--TGT-C). Our results support the suggestion that cytosine methylation is mutagenic in tetrapods producing TG dinucleotides that create TFBS that drive evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The Illumina Infinium EPIC BeadChip is a new high-throughput array for DNA methylation analysis, extending the earlier 450k array by over 400 000 new sites. Previously, a method named eFORGE was developed to provide insights into cell type-specific and cell-composition effects for 450k data. Here, we present a significantly updated and improved version of eFORGE that can analyze both EPIC and 450k array data. New features include analysis of chromatin states, transcription factor motifs and DNase I footprints, providing tools for epigenome-wide association study interpretation and epigenome editing. Availability and implementation eFORGE v2.0 is implemented as a web tool available from https://eforge.altiusinstitute.org and https://eforge-tf.altiusinstitute.org/. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The brain, spinal cord, and neural retina comprise the central nervous system (CNS) of vertebrates. Understanding the regulatory mechanisms that underlie the enormous cell-type diversity of the CNS is a significant challenge. Whole-genome mapping of DNase I-hypersensitive sites (DHSs) has been used to identify cis-regulatory elements in many tissues. We have applied this approach to the mouse CNS, including developing and mature neural retina, whole brain, and two well-characterized brain regions, the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex. Results: For the various regions and developmental stages of the CNS that we analyzed, there were approximately the same number of DHSs; however, there were many DHSs unique to each CNS region and developmental stage. Many of the DHSs are likely to mark enhancers that are specific to the specific CNS region and developmental stage. We validated the DNase I mapping approach for identification of CNS enhancers using the existing VISTA Browser database and with in vivo and in vitro electroporation of the retina. Analysis of transcription factor consensus sites within the DHSs shows distinct region-specific profiles of transcriptional regulators particular to each region. Clustering developmentally dynamic DHSs in the retina revealed enrichment of developmental stagespecific transcriptional regulators. Additionally, we found reporter gene activity in the retina driven from several previously uncharacterized regulatory elements surrounding the neurodevelopmental gene Otx2. Identification of DHSs shared between mouse and human showed region-specific differences in the evolution of cis-regulatory elements. Conclusions: Overall, our results demonstrate the potential of genome-wide DNase I mapping to cis-regulatory questions regarding the regional diversity within the CNS. These data represent an extensive catalogue of potential cis-regulatory elements within the CNS that display region and temporal specificity, as well as a set of DHSs common to CNS tissues. Further examination of evolutionary conservation of DHSs between CNS regions and different species may reveal important cis-regulatory elements in the evolution of the mammalian CNS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Major features of transcription by human RNA polymerase II (Pol II) remain poorly defined due to a lack of quantitative approaches for visualizing Pol II progress at nucleotide resolution. We developed a simple and powerful approach for performing native elongating transcript sequencing (NET-seq) in human cells that globally maps strand-specific Pol II density at nucleotide resolution. NET-seq exposes a mode of antisense transcription that originates downstream and converges on transcription from the canonical promoter. Convergent transcription is associated with a distinctive chromatin configuration and is characteristic of lower-expressed genes. Integration of NET-seq with genomic footprinting data reveals stereotypic Pol II pausing coincident with transcription factor occupancy. Finally, exons retained in mature transcripts display Pol II pausing signatures that differ markedly from skipped exons, indicating an intrinsic capacity for Pol II to recognize exons with different processing fates. Together, human NET-seq exposes the topography and regulatory complexity of human gene expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The basic body plan and major physiological axes have been highly conserved during mammalian evolution, yet only a small fraction of the human genome sequence appears to be subject to evolutionary constraint. To quantify cis- versus trans-acting contributions to mammalian regulatory evolution, we performed genomic DNase I footprinting of the mouse genome across 25 cell and tissue types, collectively defining ∼8.6 million transcription factor (TF) occupancy sites at nucleotide resolution. Here we show that mouse TF footprints conjointly encode a regulatory lexicon that is ∼95% similar with that derived from human TF footprints. However, only ∼20% of mouse TF footprints have human orthologues. Despite substantial turnover of the cis-regulatory landscape, nearly half of all pairwise regulatory interactions connecting mouse TF genes have been maintained in orthologous human cell types through evolutionary innovation of TF recognition sequences. Furthermore, the higher-level organization of mouse TF-to-TF connections into cellular network architectures is nearly identical with human. Our results indicate that evolutionary selection on mammalian gene regulation is targeted chiefly at the level of trans-regulatory circuitry, enabling and potentiating cis-regulatory plasticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have ascertained numerous trait-associated common genetic variants, frequently localized to regulatory DNA. We found that common genetic variation at BCL11A associated with fetal hemoglobin (HbF) level lies in noncoding sequences decorated by an erythroid enhancer chromatin signature. Fine-mapping uncovers a motif-disrupting common variant associated with reduced transcription factor (TF) binding, modestly diminished BCL11A expression, and elevated HbF. The surrounding sequences function in vivo as a developmental stage-specific, lineage-restricted enhancer. Genome engineering reveals the enhancer is required in erythroid but not B-lymphoid cells for BCL11A expression. These findings illustrate how GWASs may expose functional variants of modest impact within causal elements essential for appropriate gene expression. We propose the GWAS-marked BCL11A enhancer represents an attractive target for therapeutic genome engineering for the b-hemoglobinopathies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DNase?I hypersensitive sites (DHSs) are markers of regulatory DNA and have underpinned the discovery of all classes of cis-regulatory elements including enhancers, promoters, insulators, silencers and locus control regions. Here we present the first extensive map of human DHSs identified through genome-wide profiling in 125 diverse cell and tissue types. We identify ?2.9 million DHSs that encompass virtually all known experimentally validated cis-regulatory sequences and expose a vast trove of novel elements, most with highly cell-selective regulation. Annotating these elements using ENCODE data reveals novel relationships between chromatin accessibility, transcription, DNA methylation and regulatory factor occupancy patterns. We connect ?580,000 distal DHSs with their target promoters, revealing systematic pairing of different classes of distal DHSs and specific promoter types. Patterning of chromatin accessibility at many regulatory regions is organized with dozens to hundreds of co-activated elements, and the transcellular DNase?I sensitivity pattern at a given region can predict cell-type-specific functional behaviours. The DHS landscape shows signatures of recent functional evolutionary constraint. However, the DHS compartment in pluripotent and immortalized cells exhibits higher mutation rates than that in highly differentiated cells, exposing an unexpected link between chromatin accessibility, proliferative potential and patterns of human variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The characteristics and evolutionary forces acting on regulatory variation in humans remains elusive because of the difficulty in defining functionally important noncoding DNA. Here, we combine genome-scale maps of regulatory DNA marked by DNase I hypersensitive sites (DHSs) from 138 cell and tissue types with whole-genome sequences of 53 geographically diverse individuals in order to better delimit the patterns of regulatory variation in humans. We estimate that individuals likely harbor many more functionally important variants in regulatory DNA compared with protein-coding regions, although they are likely to have, on average, smaller effect sizes. Moreover, we demonstrate that there is significant heterogeneity in the level of functional constraint in regulatory DNA among different cell types. We also find marked variability in functional constraint among transcription factor motifs in regulatory DNA, with sequence motifs for major developmental regulators, such as HOX proteins, exhibiting levels of constraint comparable to protein-coding regions. Finally, we perform a genome-wide scan of recent positive selection and identify hundreds of novel substrates of adaptive regulatory evolution that are enriched for biologically interesting pathways such as melanogenesis and adipocytokine signaling. These data and results provide new insights into patterns of regulatory variation in individuals and populations and demonstrate that a large proportion of functionally important variation lies beyond the exome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The large and growing number of genome-wide datasets highlights the need for high-performance feature analysis and data comparison methods, in addition to efficient data storage and retrieval techniques. We introduce BEDOPS, a software suite for common genomic analysis tasks which offers improved flexibility, scalability and execution time characteristics over previously published packages. The suite includes a utility to compress large inputs into a lossless format that can provide greater space savings and faster data extractions than alternatives.Availability: http://code.google.com/p/bedops/ includes binaries, source and documentation.Contact: sjn@u.washington.edu and jstam@u.washington.eduSupplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]