FIREWACh: High-throughput Functional Detection of Transcriptional Regulatory Modules in Mammalian Cells

Abstract

Promoters and enhancers establish precise gene transcription patterns. The development of functional approaches for their identification in mammalian cells has been complicated by the size of these genomes. Here we report a new method called FIREWACh ( F unctional I dentification of R egulatory E lements W ithin A ccessible Ch romatin), a high-throughput functional assay for directly identifying active promoter and enhancer elements. FIREWACh simultaneously assessed over 80,000 DNA fragments derived from “nucleosome-free regions” within embryonic stem cell (ESC) chromatin to identify 6,364 new active regulatory elements. Many FIREWACh DNAs represent newly discovered ESC-specific enhancers and their analyses identified enriched binding site motifs for ESC transcription factors including SOX2, OCT4 (POU5f1), and KLF4. Thus FIREWACh identifies endogenous regulators of gene expression and can be used for the discovery of key cell-specific transcription factors. The application of FIREWACh to additional cultured cell types will facilitate functional annotation of the genome and expand our view of transcriptional network dynamics.