Skip to main content
. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Dec 29.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Rev Cardiol. 2019 Oct 2;17(4):216–228. doi: 10.1038/s41569-019-0265-3

Figure 1: Epigenetic landscape of regulatory DNA is set-up by transcription factors.

Figure 1:

Chromatin is generally divided into transcription permissive euchromatin and compact inactive heterochromatin. Heterochromatin is often associated with repressive histone modifications such as H3K9me2/3 and H3K27me3. Enhancers and promoters are located in euchromatin and are associated with a distinct epigenetic mark-up (Box 2). Top left: active enhancers can be characterized by the presence of broad H3K4me1 and narrow H3K27ac marks and an ATAC-seq (open chromatin) signal. Top right: active promoters display narrow H3K4me3, H3K27Ac, and ATAC signal. Bottom: transcription factor (TF) binding sites are located within the nucleosome-free regions, characterized by ATAC-seq signal enrichment. In macrophages regulatory elements are associated with binding of lineage determining TFs PU1, CEBPB and AP-1 and can be further activated by binding of signal dependent TFs such as LPS-induced NF-κB or lipid-induced PPAR-ɣ. Activating TFs can recruit histone modifying enzymes (HMEs), such as histone acetyl transferases (HATs) to set up a permissive chromatin landscape. At promoters SDTFs do not regularly bind directly, but the open chromatin allows for the binding of RNA polymerase II, poising the gene for transcription.