High resolution single-cell chromatin 3D modeling reveals coherent chromatin aggregation with varied structures in controlling genome function stability

Abstract

The genome 3D architecture is thought to be related to regulating gene expression levels in cells and can be explained by genome-wide chromatin interactions which have been explored by chromosome conformation capture based techniques, especially Hi-C. Based on single-cell Hi-C data, we developed a new method in constructing experimental consistent 3D intact genome structures for individual cells with a resolution of 10kb or higher. The modeled structures showed marked variations of 3D genome organization across different cells. However, chromosome loci marked by different proteins, such as CTCF and post-translationally modified histones, are consistently non-specifically aggregated in space. Interestingly, similar aggregations between active enhancers and active promoters were observed, especially for those separated by genomic regions of the scale of megabase or larger. Such long-range associations between active enhancers and promoters are strongly correlated with spatial aggregation of chromosome loci marked by different proteins. Through analyzing the 3D structures of intact genome, we proposed that coherent gene activation profiles among individual cells can be achieved by the consistent aggregation of protein marked loci instead of maintaining identical folded conformations.