Transcribed enhancers lead waves of coordinated transcription in transitioning mammalian cells

Erik Arner, Carsten O. Daub, Kristoffer Vitting-Seerup, Robin Andersson, Berit Lilje, Finn Drabløs, Andreas Lennartsson, Michelle Rönnerblad, Olga Hrydziuszko, Morana Vitezic, Tom C. Freeman, Ahmad M. N. Alhendi, Peter Arner, Richard Axton, J. Kenneth Baillie, Anthony Beckhouse, Beatrice Bodega, James Briggs, Frank Brombacher, Margaret Davis, Michael Detmar, Anna Ehrlund, Mitsuhiro Endoh, Afsaneh Eslami, Michela Fagiolini, Lynsey Fairbairn, Geoffrey J. Faulkner, Carmelo Ferrai, Malcolm E. Fisher, Lesley Forrester, Daniel Goldowitz, Reto Guler, Thomas Ha, Mitsuko Hara, Meenhard Herlyn, Tomokatsu Ikawa, Chieko Kai, Hiroshi Kawamoto, Levon M. Khachigian, S. Peter Klinken, Soichi Kojima, Haruhiko Koseki, Sarah Klein, Niklas Mejhert, Ken Miyaguchi, Yosuke Mizuno, Mitsuru Morimoto, Kelly J. Morris, Christine Mummery, Yutaka Nakachi, Soichi Ogishima, Mariko Okada-Hatakeyama, Yasushi Okazaki, Valerio Orlando, Dmitry Ovchinnikov, Robert Passier, Margaret Patrikakis, Ana Pombo, Xian-Yang Qin, Sugata Roy, Hiroki Sato, Suzana Savvi, Alka Saxena, Anita Schwegmann, Daisuke Sugiyama, Rolf Swoboda, Hiroshi Tanaka, Andru Tomoiu, Louise N. Winteringham, Ernst Wolvetang, Chiyo Yanagi-Mizuochi, Misako Yoneda, Susan Zabierowski, Peter Zhang, Imad Abugessaisa, Nicolas Bertin, Alexander D. Diehl, Shiro Fukuda, Masaaki Furuno, Jayson Harshbarger, Akira Hasegawa, Fumi Hori, Sachi Ishikawa-Kato, Yuri Ishizu, Masayoshi Itoh, Tsugumi Kawashima, Miki Kojima, Naoto Kondo, Marina Lizio, Terrence F. Meehan, Christopher J. Mungall, Mitsuyoshi Murata, Hiromi Nishiyori-Sueki, Serkan Sahin, Sayaka Nagao-Sato, Jessica Severin, Michiel J. L. de Hoon, Jun Kawai, Takeya Kasukawa, Timo Lassmann, Harukazu Suzuki, Hideya Kawaji, Kim M. Summers, Christine Wells, FANTOM Consortium, David A. Hume, Alistair R. R. Forrest, Albin Sandelin, Piero Carninci, Yoshihide Hayashizaki

While it is generally accepted that cellular differentiation requires changes to transcriptional networks, dynamic regulation of promoters and enhancers at specific sets of genes has not been previously studied en masse. Exploiting the fact that active promoters and enhancers are transcribed, we simultaneously measured their activity in 19 human and 14 mouse time courses covering a wide range of cell types and biological stimuli. Enhancer RNAs, then mRNAs encoding transcription factors dominated the earliest responses. Binding sites for key lineage transcription factors were simultaneously over-represented in enhancers and promoters active in each cellular system. Our data support a highly generalizable model in which enhancer transcription is the earliest event in successive waves of transcriptional change during cellular differentiation or activation.