Figure 1.

Characterizing human neuronal cells using 3D epigenome. (A) The human brain contains diverse heterogeneous neuronal cell types, which include neuons, astrocytes, oligodendrocytes and microglia et al. (B) Different cell types show distinct 3D epigenome landscape and gene regulatory network. In the example, besides the shared open chromatin regions, the neuronal and glial cells have unique open chromatin regions marked by ATAC-seq signal, which indicate potential cell-type-specific regulatory function of CREs. Active chromatin marks, 3D chromatin contacts and RNA-seq data indicate that CRE1 can regulate Gene B in the neuronal cells and that CRE2 can regulate Gene A in glial cells. Due to the cell-type-specific transcriptional regulation of CREs, functional validation of disease-related SNP within CRE1 would be best performed in neuronal cells.