In silico prediction of high-resolution Hi-C interaction matrices

Nat Commun. 2019 Dec 6;10(1):5449. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-13423-8.

Abstract

The three-dimensional (3D) organization of the genome plays an important role in gene regulation bringing distal sequence elements in 3D proximity to genes hundreds of kilobases away. Hi-C is a powerful genome-wide technique to study 3D genome organization. Owing to experimental costs, high resolution Hi-C datasets are limited to a few cell lines. Computational prediction of Hi-C counts can offer a scalable and inexpensive approach to examine 3D genome organization across multiple cellular contexts. Here we present HiC-Reg, an approach to predict contact counts from one-dimensional regulatory signals. HiC-Reg predictions identify topologically associating domains and significant interactions that are enriched for CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF) bidirectional motifs and interactions identified from complementary sources. CTCF and chromatin marks, especially repressive and elongation marks, are most important for HiC-Reg's predictive performance. Taken together, HiC-Reg provides a powerful framework to generate high-resolution profiles of contact counts that can be used to study individual locus level interactions and higher-order organizational units of the genome.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • CCCTC-Binding Factor / metabolism
  • Cell Line
  • Chromatin / chemistry
  • Chromosomes / chemistry*
  • Computational Biology / methods*
  • Computer Simulation*
  • Gene Expression Regulation
  • Gene Regulatory Networks
  • Genome*
  • Genomics / methods*
  • Humans
  • Machine Learning
  • Models, Genetic
  • Promoter Regions, Genetic / genetics

Substances

  • CCCTC-Binding Factor
  • Chromatin