Human, Chimpanzee, Gorilla, Orangutan, Macaque Epigenomics

Changes in gene expression controlled by epigenomic gene regulatory architectures play a major role in evolution. We aim to study the interplay between epigenetic activities and gene expression during primate evolution. We establish primate LCLs as a comparative cellular somatic model by profiling them with several next-generation sequencing-based techniques. Gene regulatory architectures were recovered by integrating epigenomic landscapes with existing genome-wide contact maps. We observed distinctive conservation patterns for different promoter and enhancer activities. We show that specific dynamics of strong and poised activities in genic promoters and intragenic enhancers explain gene expression changes in primates. We conclude that the evolution of regulatory signals is driven by their regulatory activities and their role in gene regulation deeply influences gene expression evolution in primate evolution.