Fine Tuning of Craniofacial Morphology by Distant-Acting in vivo Enhancers. Mus musculus

The shape of the human face is largely genetically determined, but the genetic drivers of craniofacial morphology remain poorly understood. In particular, little is known about the contributions of gene regulatory sequences active in the developing face to craniofacial morphology. Here we used a combination of epigenomic profiling, in vivo characterization of more than 200 craniofacial candidate enhancer sequences in transgenic mice, and targeted deletion experiments to examine the role of distant-acting enhancers in craniofacial development. We identified complex regulatory landscapes with thousands of enhancers genome-wide that drive a remarkable spatial complexity of in vivo expression patterns. The ChIP-seq experiments in this entry was the basis for the genome-wide analysis of craniofacial enhancers and served as the source for substantialin vivo characterization via transgenic reporter mice and for enhancer knockout experiments. Overall design: p300 ChIP-seq experiment on mouse embryonic tissue (e11.5)