Enhancers and Transcriptional Regulation

Interactions between the genome and its cellular and signaling environments, which ultimately occur at the level of chromatin, are the key to comprehending how cell-type-specific gene expression patterns arise and are maintained during development or are misregulated in disease. Central to the cell type-specific transcriptional regulation are distal cis-regulatory elements called enhancers, which function in a modular way to provide exquisite spatiotemporal control of gene expression during development. We are using a combination of genomic, genetic, biochemical, and single-cell approaches to investigate how enhancers are activated in response to developmental stimuli, how they communicate with target promoters over large genomic distances to regulate transcriptional outputs, what is the role of chromatin modification and remodeling in facilitating or restricting enhancer activity and how regulatory sequence change leads to the phenotypic divergence in humans. I will discuss our latest results on the mechanisms underlying enhancer function and gene regulation in development and disease.