Compound cis-regulatory elements with both boundary and enhancer sequences in the human genome.

Abstract

It has been suggested that presumably distinct classes of genomic regulatory elements may actually share common sets of features and mechanisms. However, there has been no genome-wide assessment of the prevalence of this phenomenon. To evaluate this possibility, we performed a bioinformatic screen for the existence of compound regulatory elements in the human genome. We identified numerous such colocated boundary and enhancer elements from human CD4(+) T cells. We report evidence that such compound regulatory elements possess unique chromatin features and facilitate cell type-specific functions related to inflammation and immune response in CD4(+) T cells.