Dynamic alterations of 3D chromatin structure during differentiation. Dynamic alterations of 3D chromatin structure during differentiation

Regulation of gene expression underlies the establishment and maintenance of cell identity. Chromatin structure and gene activity are linked at long-range via positioning of loci to transcriptionally permissive (euchromatin) or repressive (heterochromatin) environments and at short-range by connecting cis regulatory elements such as promoters and enhancers. However, the dynamics of these processes during cell differentiation still remains unclear. We used Tethered Chromatin Conformation Capture (TCC) to compare the three dimensional chromatin structure of mouse embryonic stem cells (ESC) and neural stem cells (NSC) which we directly derived from the ESC.