Capture-C reveals preformed chromatin interactions between HIF-binding sites and distant promoters. [ChIP-Seq]

Hypoxia inducible factor (HIF) directs an extensive transcriptional cascade that transduces numerous adaptive responses to hypoxia. Pan-genomic analyses, using chromatin immunoprecipitation and transcript profiling, have revealed large numbers of HIF-binding sites that are generally associated with hypoxia-inducible transcripts, even over long chromosomal distances. However, these studies do not define the specific targets of HIF-binding sites and do not reveal how induction of HIF affects chromatin conformation over distantly connected functional elements. To address these questions we deployed a recently developed chromosome conformation assay that enables simultaneous high-resolution analyses from multiple viewpoints. These assays defined specific long-range interactions between intergenic HIF-binding regions and one or more promoters of hypoxia-inducible genes, revealing the existence of multiple enhancer-promoter, promoter-enhancer and enhancer-enhancer interactions. We utilised ChIP-seq to study the histone marks and CTCF binding in MCF7 cells in normoxia and hypoxia