RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Heart enhancers with deeply conserved regulatory activity are established early in development
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 312611
DO 10.1101/312611
A1 Xuefei Yuan
A1 Mengyi Song
A1 Patrick Devine
A1 Benoit G. Bruneau
A1 Ian C. Scott
A1 Michael D. Wilson
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/05/04/312611.abstract
AB During the phylotypic period embryos from different genera show similar gene expression patterns, implying common regulatory mechanisms. To identify enhancers involved in the initial events of cardiogenesis, which occurs during the phylotypic period, we isolated early cardiac progenitor cells from zebrafish embryos and characterized 3838 open chromatin regions specific to this cell population. Of these regions, 162 overlapped with conserved non-coding elements (CNEs) that also mapped to open chromatin regions in human. Most of the zebrafish conserved open chromatin elements tested drove gene expression in the developing heart. Despite modest sequence identity, human orthologous open chromatin regions could recapitulate the spatial temporal expression patterns of the zebrafish sequence, potentially providing a basis for phylotypic gene expression patterns. Genome-wide, we discovered 5598 zebrafish-human conserved open chromatin regions, suggesting that a diverse repertoire of ancient enhancers is established prior to organogenesis and the phylotypic period.