The Ties That Bind: Mapping the Dynamic Enhancer-Promoter Interactome

Abstract

Coupling chromosome conformation capture to molecular enrichment for promoter-containing DNA fragments enables the systematic mapping of interactions between individual distal regulatory sequences and their target genes. In this Minireview, we describe recent progress in the application of this technique and related complementary approaches to gain insight into the lineage- and cell-type-specific dynamics of interactions between regulators and gene promoters.

Figure 1. Lineage-specific interactions of promoters with non-coding regulatory sequences

Left: Javierre et al. (2016) used promoter capture Hi-C (PCHi-C) to systematically map interactions between promoters and promoter-interacting regions (PIRs) across 17 primary human hematopoietic cell types (left, 10 representative examples shown). Right: Comparison of PIR-promoter interactions across cell types reveals that some interactions are invariant across all cell types examined, while others are specific to major lineages or individual cell types. Importantly, some promoters interact with different sets of PIRs depending on cell type and, vice versa, some PIRs interact with different sets of promoters in a cell-type-specific manner.