Acetylation of histone H2B marks active enhancers and predicts CBP/p300 target genes

Takeo Narita, Yoshiki Higashijima, Sinan Kilic, Tim Liebner, Jonas Walter, Chunaram Choudhary*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

17 Citations (Scopus)
27 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Chromatin features are widely used for genome-scale mapping of enhancers. However, discriminating active enhancers from other cis-regulatory elements, predicting enhancer strength and identifying their target genes is challenging. Here we establish histone H2B N-terminus multisite lysine acetylation (H2BNTac) as a signature of active enhancers. H2BNTac prominently marks candidate active enhancers and a subset of promoters and discriminates them from ubiquitously active promoters. Two mechanisms underlie the distinct H2BNTac specificity: (1) unlike H3K27ac, H2BNTac is specifically catalyzed by CBP/p300; (2) H2A–H2B, but not H3–H4, are rapidly exchanged through transcription-induced nucleosome remodeling. H2BNTac-positive candidate enhancers show a high validation rate in orthogonal enhancer activity assays and a vast majority of endogenously active enhancers are marked by H2BNTac and H3K27ac. Notably, H2BNTac intensity predicts enhancer strength and outperforms current state-of-the-art models in predicting CBP/p300 target genes. These findings have broad implications for generating fine-grained enhancer maps and modeling CBP/p300-dependent gene regulation.

Original languageEnglish
JournalNature Genetics
Volume55
Pages (from-to)679-692
ISSN1061-4036
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

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