TATA and paused promoters active in differentiated tissues have distinct expression characteristics |
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| Authors: | Vivekanandan Ramalingam Malini Natarajan Jeff Johnston Julia Zeitlinger |
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| Institution: | 1. Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City MO, USA ; 2. Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City KS, USA ;3.Present address: Department of Genetics, Stanford University, Stanford CA, USA ;4.Present address: Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry, Brown University, Providence RI, USA ;5.Present address: Center for Pediatric Genomic Medicine, Children''s Mercy, Kansas City MO, USA |
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| Abstract: | Core promoter types differ in the extent to which RNA polymerase II (Pol II) pauses after initiation, but how this affects their tissue‐specific gene expression characteristics is not well understood. While promoters with Pol II pausing elements are active throughout development, TATA promoters are highly active in differentiated tissues. We therefore used a genomics approach on late‐stage Drosophila embryos to analyze the properties of promoter types. Using tissue‐specific Pol II ChIP‐seq, we found that paused promoters have high levels of paused Pol II throughout the embryo, even in tissues where the gene is not expressed, while TATA promoters only show Pol II occupancy when the gene is active. The promoter types are associated with different chromatin accessibility in ATAC‐seq data and have different expression characteristics in single‐cell RNA‐seq data. The two promoter types may therefore be optimized for different properties: paused promoters show more consistent expression when active, while TATA promoters have lower background expression when inactive. We propose that tissue‐specific genes have evolved to use two different strategies for their differential expression across tissues. |
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| Keywords: | effector genes gene expression noise Pol II pausing scRNA‐ seq TATA promoter |
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