Extended intergenic DNA contributes to neuron-specific expression of neighboring genes in the mammalian nervous system

Ravneet Jaura, Ssu-Yu Yeh, Kaitlin N. Montanera, Alyssa Ialongo, Zobia Anwar, Yiming Lu, Kavindu Puwakdandawa and Ho Sung Rhee ()
Additional contact information
Ravneet Jaura: University of Toronto
Ssu-Yu Yeh: University of Toronto
Kaitlin N. Montanera: University of Toronto
Alyssa Ialongo: University of Toronto
Zobia Anwar: University of Toronto
Yiming Lu: University of Toronto
Kavindu Puwakdandawa: University of Toronto
Ho Sung Rhee: University of Toronto

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-18

Abstract: Abstract Mammalian genomes comprise largely intergenic noncoding DNA with numerous cis-regulatory elements. Whether and how the size of intergenic DNA affects gene expression in a tissue-specific manner remain unknown. Here we show that genes with extended intergenic regions are preferentially expressed in neural tissues but repressed in other tissues in mice and humans. Extended intergenic regions contain twice as many active enhancers in neural tissues compared to other tissues. Neural genes with extended intergenic regions are globally co-expressed with neighboring neural genes controlled by distinct enhancers in the shared intergenic regions. Moreover, generic neural genes expressed in multiple tissues have significantly longer intergenic regions than neural genes expressed in fewer tissues. The intergenic regions of the generic neural genes have many tissue-specific active enhancers containing distinct transcription factor binding sites specific to each neural tissue. We also show that genes with extended intergenic regions are enriched for neural genes only in vertebrates. The expansion of intergenic regions may reflect the regulatory complexity of tissue-type-specific gene expression in the nervous system.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30192-z Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-30192-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30192-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().