Exploring spatially adjacent TFBS-clustered regions with Hi-C data

MOTIVATION: Transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) are clustered in the human genome, forming the TFBS-clustered regions that regulate gene transcription, which requires dynamic chromatin configurations between promoters and distal regulatory elements. Here, we propose a regulatory model called spatially adjacent TFBS-clustered regions (SATs), in which TFBS-clustered regions are connected by spatial proximity as identified by high-resolution Hi-C data. RESULTS: TFBS-clustered regions forming SATs appeared less frequently in gene promoters than did isolated TFBS-clustered regions, whereas SATs as a whole appeared more frequently. These observations indicate that multiple distal TFBS-clustered regions combined to form SATs to regulate genes. Further examination confirmed that a substantial portion of genes regulated by SATs were located between the paired TFBS-clustered regions instead of the downstream. We reconstructed the chromosomal conformation of the H1 human embryonic stem cell line using the ShRec3D algorithm and proposed the SAT regulatory model. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.