Cavalheiro Gabriel R, Pollex Tim, Furlong Eileen Em
European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Genome Biology Unit, D-69117, Heidelberg, Germany; Collaboration for Joint PhD Degree Between EMBL and Heidelberg University, Faculty of Biosciences, Germany.
European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Genome Biology Unit, D-69117, Heidelberg, Germany.
Curr Opin Genet Dev. 2021 Apr;67:119-129. doi: 10.1016/j.gde.2020.12.015. Epub 2021 Jan 23.
The past decade has seen a huge jump in the resolution and scale at which we can interrogate the three-dimensional properties of the genome. This revealed different types of chromatin structures including topologically associating domains, partitioning genes and their enhancers into interacting domains. While the visualisation of these topologies and their dynamics has dramatically improved, our understanding of their underlying mechanisms and functional roles in gene expression has lagged behind. A suite of recent studies have addressed this using genetic manipulations to perturb topological features and loops at different scales. Here we assess the new biological insights gained on the functional relationship between genome topology and gene expression, with a particular focus on enhancer function.
在过去十年中，我们在解析基因组三维特性的分辨率和规模方面取得了巨大飞跃。这揭示了不同类型的染色质结构，包括拓扑相关结构域，将基因及其增强子划分到相互作用结构域中。虽然这些拓扑结构及其动态变化的可视化有了显著改善，但我们对其潜在机制及其在基因表达中的功能作用的理解却滞后了。最近一系列研究通过基因操作在不同尺度上干扰拓扑特征和环来解决这一问题。在这里，我们评估了在基因组拓扑结构与基因表达之间的功能关系方面获得的新生物学见解，特别关注增强子功能。
