Differential contribution to gene expression prediction of histone modifications at enhancers or promoters

PLoS Comput Biol. 2021 Sep 2;17(9):e1009368. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009368. eCollection 2021 Sep.

Abstract

The ChIP-seq signal of histone modifications at promoters is a good predictor of gene expression in different cellular contexts, but whether this is also true at enhancers is not clear. To address this issue, we develop quantitative models to characterize the relationship of gene expression with histone modifications at enhancers or promoters. We use embryonic stem cells (ESCs), which contain a full spectrum of active and repressed (poised) enhancers, to train predictive models. As many poised enhancers in ESCs switch towards an active state during differentiation, predictive models can also be trained on poised enhancers throughout differentiation and in development. Remarkably, we determine that histone modifications at enhancers, as well as promoters, are predictive of gene expression in ESCs and throughout differentiation and development. Importantly, we demonstrate that their contribution to the predictive models varies depending on their location in enhancers or promoters. Moreover, we use a local regression (LOESS) to normalize sequencing data from different sources, which allows us to apply predictive models trained in a specific cellular context to a different one. We conclude that the relationship between gene expression and histone modifications at enhancers is universal and different from promoters. Our study provides new insight into how histone modifications relate to gene expression based on their location in enhancers or promoters.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Cell Differentiation / genetics
  • Cells, Cultured
  • Chromatin Immunoprecipitation Sequencing / statistics & numerical data
  • Computational Biology
  • Enhancer Elements, Genetic*
  • Gene Expression*
  • Histone Code / genetics*
  • Humans
  • Mice
  • Models, Genetic*
  • Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells / metabolism
  • Promoter Regions, Genetic*
  • Regression Analysis

Grants and funding

The work in the Di Croce laboratory is supported by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (BFU2016-75008-P, and PID2019-108322GB-100), “Fundación Vencer El Cancer” (VEC), the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), and from AGAUR (SGR 2017-2019, AGAUR 2019 FI_B 00426). We acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation to the EMBL partnership, the Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa and the CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.