Event
Bioengineering Seminar Series: Zhiping Weng
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
11:00 a.m.
2108 Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Building (0
Professor J. Helim Aranda-Espinoza
(301) 405-8250
helim@umd.edu
Identification and characterization of regulatory structures in the human genome
Presented by Zhiping Weng
Boston University
The identification of regulatory elements from different cell types is necessary for understanding the mechanisms controlling cell type-specific and housekeeping gene expression. Mapping DNaseI hypersensitive (HS) sites is an accurate method for identifying the location of functional regulatory elements. We have used a high throughput method, called DNase-chip, to identify 3904 DNaseI HS sites from six cell types across 1% of the human genome. A significant number (22%) of DNaseI HS sites from each cell type are ubiquitously present among all cell types studied. Surprisingly, nearly all of these ubiquitous DNaseI HS sites correspond to either promoters or insulator elements: 86% of them are located near annotated transcription start sites (TSS) and 10% are bound by CTCF, a protein with known enhancer blocking insulator activity. We also identified a large number of DNaseI HS sites that are cell type-specific (only present in one cell type); these regions are enriched for enhancer elements and correlate with cell typespecific gene expression as well as cell type-specific histone modifications. Finally, we find that approximately 8% of the genome overlaps a DNaseI HS site in at least one the six cell lines studied, indicating that a significant percentage of the genome is potentially functional.
