Discovery of cell-type specific regulatory elements in the human genome using differential chromatin modification analysis.
Chromatin modifications have been comprehensively illustrated to play important roles in gene regulation and cell diversity in recent years. Given the rapid accumulation of genome-wide chromatin modification maps across multiple cell types, there is an urgent need for computational methods to analyze multiple maps to reveal combinatorial modification patterns and define functional DNA elements, especially those are specific to cell types or tissues. In this current study, we developed a computational method using differential chromatin modification analysis (dCMA) to identify cell-type-specific genomic regions with distinctive chromatin modifications. We then apply this method to a public data set with modification profiles of nine marks for nine cell types to evaluate its effectiveness. We found cell-type-specific elements unique to each cell type investigated. These unique features show significant cell-type-specific biological relevance and tend to be located within functional regulatory elements. These results demonstrate the power of a differential comparative epigenomic strategy in deciphering the human genome and characterizing cell specificity.
National Center for Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences, Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
Chen
C
Chen
Shihua
S
Zhang
Xiang-Sun
XS
Zhang
D001665:Binding Sites; D002843:Chromatin / Q000378:metabolism*; D050881:E1A-Associated p300 Protein / Q000378:metabolism; D044127:Epigenesis, Genetic; D057890:Epigenomics / Q000379:methods; D015894:Genome, Human; D006657:Histones / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D014158:Transcription, Genetic
D002843:Chromatin; D006657:Histones; D050881:E1A-Associated p300 Protein; C494360:EP300 protein, human