Artem Barski^1,3, Suresh Cuddapah^1,3, Kairong Cui^1,3, Tae-Young Roh^1,3, Dustin E. Schones^1,3, Zhibin Wang^1,3, Gang Wei^1,3, Iouri Chepelev², and Keji Zhao^1,4

¹ Laboratory of Molecular Immunology, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892
² Department of Human Genetics, Gonda Neuroscience and Genetics Research Center, University of California at Los Angeles, CA 90095
³ These authors made equal contributions and are are listed alphabetically
⁴ Corresponding author

Summary

We have generated high-resolution maps for the genome-wide distribution of 20 histone lysine and arginine methylations as well as the distribution of histone variant H2A.Z, RNA polymerase II, and the insulator binding protein CTCF across the human genome using the Solexa 1G sequencing technology. We have identified the typical patterns of histone methylations exhibited at promoters, insulators, enhancers, and transcribed regions. The monomethylation of H3K27, H3K9, H4K20, H3K79, and H2BK5 are all linked to gene activation, whereas trimethylation of H3K27, H3K9, H4K20, and H3K79 are linked to repression. H2A.Z associates with functional regulatory elements, and CTCF marks boundaries of histone methylation domains. Large chromosome domains are correlated with unique patterns of histone modifications. Chromosome breakpoints detected in T cell cancers frequently reside in chromatin regions associated with H3K4 methylations. Our data provide new insights into the function of histone methylation and chromatin organization in genome function.

Data

(Note: all coordinates are from the Human Mar. 2006 (hg18) assembly)

Data corresponding to this project have been deposited in the NCBI Short Read Archive with accession number SRA000206