An ATAC-seq atlas of chromatin accessibility in rat tissues

The Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus) serves as a valuable model for investigating complex disorders and social behaviors due to its available previous researches and easily to characterize and quantify the different type of social behavior. However, a comprehensive profiling of epigenetic regulation in rats is lacking, which is essential for a deeper understanding of diseases and social behaviors. Here, we profiled chromatin accessibility using ATAC-seq (Assay for Transposase-Accessible Chromatin coupled with next-generation sequencing) of 10 body tissues and 12 brain regions from adult rats and produced a large collection of datasets with replicates. This comprehensive ATAC-seq atlas is consisted of 397,691 accessible elements. In addition, by comparing the open chromatin landscapes among rat tissues, a total of 72,721 tissue-specific peaks and a list of putative tissue-specific transcription factors are unbiasedly identified. We further showed that many established tissue-specific transcriptional characteristics have been recapitulated in this ATAC-seq atlas, indicating that our study may pave the way for future mechanistic discoveries in diseases and social behaviors using rat as a model.