engleski

Histone modification levels are predictive for gene expression

Histones are frequently decorated with covalent modifications, which are involved in various chromatin-dependent processes. To elucidate the relationship between histone modifications and transcription, we derived quantitative models to predict expression levels of genes from histone modification levels. We found that histone modification levels and gene expression are highly correlated and showed that only a small number of histone modifications are necessary to accurately predict gene expression. We show that different sets of histone modifications are necessary to predict gene expression driven by high CpG content promoters (HCPs) or low CpG content promoters (LCPs). Quantitative models using H3K4me3 and H3K79me1 are the most predictive for expression of LCPs, whereas HCPs require H3K27ac and H4K20me1. We show that the connections between histone modifications and gene expression seem to be general, as we were able to predict gene expression levels of one cell type using a model trained on another one.

histone modifications; regression analysis; transcription

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