Summary Eukaryotic cells make many types of primary and processed RNAs that are found either in specific sub-cellular compartments or throughout the cells. A complete catalogue of these RNAs is not yet available and their characteristic sub-cellular localizations are also poorly understood. Since RNA represents the direct output of the genetic information encoded by genomes and a significant proportion of a cell’s regulatory capabilities are focused on its synthesis, processing, transport, modifications and translation, the generation of such a catalogue is crucial for understanding genome function. Here we report evidence that three quarters of the human genome is capable of being transcribed, as well as observations about the range and levels of expression, localization, processing fates, regulatory regions and modifications of almost all currently annotated and thousands of previously unannotated RNAs. These observations taken together prompt to a redefinition of the concept of a gene.

Genomes are organized into high-level 3-dimensional structures, and DNA elements separated by long genomic distances could functionally interact. Many transcription factors bind to regulatory DNA elements distant from gene promoters. While distal binding sites have been shown to regulate transcription by long-range chromatin interactions at a few loci, chromatin interactions and their impact on transcription regulation have not been investigated in a genome-wide manner. Therefore, we developed Chromatin Interaction Analysis by Paired-End Tag sequencing (ChIA-PET) for de novo detection of global chromatin interactions, and comprehensively mapped the chromatin interaction network bound by oestrogen receptor α (ERα) in the human genome. We found that most high-confidence remote ERα binding sites are anchored at gene promoters through long-range chromatin interactions, suggesting that ERα functions by extensive chromatin looping to bring genes together for coordinated transcriptional regulation. We propose that chromatin interactions constitute a primary mechanism for regulating transcription in mammalian genomes.

Summary Higher-order chromosomal organization for transcription regulation is poorly understood in eukaryotes. Using genome-wide Chromatin Interaction Analysis with Paired-End-Tag sequencing (ChIA-PET), we mapped long-range chromatin interactions associated with RNA polymerase II in human cells and uncovered widespread promoter-centered intra-genic, extra-genic and inter-genic interactions. These interactions further aggregated into higher-order clusters, wherein proximal and distal genes were engaged through promoter-promoter interactions. Most genes with promoter-promoter interactions were active and transcribed cooperatively, and some interacting promoters could influence each other implying combinatorial complexity of transcriptional controls. Comparative analyses of different cell lines showed that cell-specific chromatin interactions could provide structural frameworks for cell-specific transcription, and suggested significant enrichment of enhancer-promoter interactions for cell-specific functions. Furthermore, genetically-identified disease-associated non-coding elements were found to be spatially engaged with corresponding genes through long-range interactions. Overall, our study provides insights into the transcription regulation by three-dimensional chromatin interactions for both housekeeping and cell-specific genes in human cells.

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important roles in cancer. They are involved in chromatin remodeling, as well as transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation, through a variety of chromatin-based mechanisms and via cross-talk with other RNA species. lncRNAs can function as decoys, scaffolds, and enhancer RNAs. This review summarizes the characteristics of lncRNAs, including their roles, functions, and working mechanisms, describes methods for identifying and annotating lncRNAs, and discusses future opportunities for lncRNA-based therapies using antisense oligonucleotides.

ChIA-PET Tool can be used to process long-range chromatin interaction data. Results are visualized on a user-friendly genome browser.

Comprehensive understanding of functional elements in the human genome will require thorough interrogation and comparison of individual human genomes and genomic structures. Such an endeavor will require improvements in the throughputs and costs of DNA sequencing. Next-generation sequencing platforms have impressively low costs and high throughputs but are limited by short read lengths. An immediate and widely recognized solution to this critical limitation is the paired-end tag (PET) sequencing for various applications, collectively called the PET sequencing strategy, in which short and paired tags are extracted from the ends of long DNA fragments for ultra-high-throughput sequencing. The PET sequences can be accurately mapped to the reference genome, thus demarcating the genomic boundaries of PETrepresented DNA fragments and revealing the identities of the target DNA elements. PET protocols have been developed for the analyses of transcriptomes, transcription factor binding sites, epigenetic sites such as histone modification sites, and genome structures. The exclusive advantage of the PET technology is its ability to uncover linkages between the two ends of DNA fragments. Using this unique feature, unconventional fusion transcripts, genome structural variations, and even molecular interactions between distant genomic elements can be unraveled by PET analysis. Extensive use of PET data could lead to efficient assembly of individual human genomes, transcriptomes, and interactomes, enabling new biological and clinical insights. With its versatile and powerful nature for DNA analysis, the PET sequencing strategy has a bright future ahead.Genomics holds much promise for huge improvements in human healthcare. However, genomics faces several practical challenges. Human genomes are read out as linear sequences, but in the cell, there are many complex interactions and mechanisms that operate around human DNA to transduce DNA information into biological function (The ENCODE Project Consortium 2007). Conventional DNA sequencing has been used to extensively explore genetic elements and structures; however, high sequencing costs and low throughputs have historically limited in-depth analysis of a broad range of genomic elements, making the development of new sequencing strategies necessary.Next-generation sequencing technologies are transforming the field of genomic science (Schuster 2008). The currently available next-generation sequencing methods (Margulies et al. 2005;Shendure et al. 2005;Barski et al. 2007;Johnson et al. 2007) read DNA templates in a highly parallel manner to generate massive amounts of sequencing data, but the read length for each DNA template is short compared with that of traditionally used Sanger capillary sequencing instruments. This massively parallel and short read strategy of DNA sequencing opens many new ways for interrogating human genomes (Wold and Myers 2008). However, the short read lengths lead to serious limitations in applying this enormous sequencing power to many biological applicati...

Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is an important technique for studying protein-DNA interactions. Whole genome ChIP methods have enjoyed much success, but are limited in that they cannot uncover important long-range chromatin interactions. Chromosome Conformation Capture (3C) and related methods are capable of detecting remote chromatin interactions, but are tedious, have low signal-to-noise ratios, and are not genome-wide. Although the addition of ChIP to 3C (ChIP-3C) would conceivably reduce noise and increase specificity for chromatin interaction detection, there are concerns that simple mixing of the ChIP and 3C protocols would lead to high levels of false positives. In this essay, we dissect current ChIP-and 3C-based methodologies, discuss the models of specific as opposed to non-specific chromatin interactions, and suggest approaches to separate specific chromatin complexes from non-specific chromatin fragments. We conclude that the combination of sonication-based chromatin fragmentation, ChIP-based enrichment, chromatin proximity ligation and Paired-End Tag ultra-high-throughput sequencing will be a winning implementation for genome-wide, unbiased and de novo discovery of long-range chromatin interactions, which will help to establish an emerging field for studying human chromatin interactomes and genome regulation networks in 3-dimensional spaces.

The mechanisms underlying gene repression and silencers are poorly understood. Here we investigate the hypothesis that H3K27me3-rich regions of the genome, defined from clusters of H3K27me3 peaks, may be used to identify silencers that can regulate gene expression via proximity or looping. We find that H3K27me3-rich regions are associated with chromatin interactions and interact preferentially with each other. H3K27me3-rich regions component removal at interaction anchors by CRISPR leads to upregulation of interacting target genes, altered H3K27me3 and H3K27ac levels at interacting regions, and altered chromatin interactions. Chromatin interactions did not change at regions with high H3K27me3, but regions with low H3K27me3 and high H3K27ac levels showed changes in chromatin interactions. Cells with H3K27me3-rich regions knockout also show changes in phenotype associated with cell identity, and altered xenograft tumor growth. Finally, we observe that H3K27me3-rich regions-associated genes and long-range chromatin interactions are susceptible to H3K27me3 depletion. Our results characterize H3K27me3-rich regions and their mechanisms of functioning via looping.