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Many transposable elements (TEs) contain transcription factor binding sites and are implicated as potential regulatory elements. However, TEs are rarely functionally tested for regulatory activity, which in turn limits our understanding of how TE regulatory activity has evolved. We systematically tested the human LTR18A subfamily for regulatory activity using massively parallel reporter assay (MPRA) and found AP-1- and CEBP-related binding motifs as drivers of enhancer activity. Functional analysis of evolutionarily reconstructed ancestral sequences revealed that LTR18A elements have generally lost regulatory activity over time through sequence changes, with the largest effects occurring owing to mutations in the AP-1 and CEBP motifs. We observed that the two motifs are conserved at higher rates than expected based on neutral evolution. Finally, we identified LTR18A elements as potential enhancers in the human genome, primarily in epithelial cells. Together, our results provide a model for the origin, evolution, and co-option of TE-derived regulatory elements.

The ability to alter genomes specifically by CRISPR-Cas gene editing has revolutionized biological research, biotechnology, and medicine. Broad therapeutic application of this technology, however, will require thorough preclinical assessment of off-target editing by homology-based prediction coupled with reliable methods for detecting off-target editing. Several off-target site nomination assays exist, but careful comparison is needed to ascertain their relative strengths and weaknesses. In this study, HEK293T cells were treated with Streptococcus pyogenes Cas9 and eight guide RNAs with varying levels of predicted promiscuity in order to compare the performance of three homology-independent off-target nomination methods: the cell-based assay, GUIDE-seq, and the biochemical assays CIRCLE-seq and SITE-seq. The three methods were benchmarked by sequencing 75,000 homology-nominated sites using hybrid capture followed by high-throughput sequencing, providing the most comprehensive assessment of such methods to date. The three methods performed similarly in nominating sequence-confirmed off-target sites, but with large differences in the total number of sites nominated. When combined with homology-dependent nomination methods and confirmation by sequencing, all three off-target nomination methods provide a comprehensive assessment of off-target activity. GUIDE-seq's low false-positive rate and the high correlation of its signal with observed editing highlight its suitability for nominating off-target sites for ex vivo CRISPR-Cas therapies.

In the genome, most occurrences of transcription factor binding sites (TFBS) have no cis-regulatory activity, which suggests that flanking sequences contain information that distinguishes functional from nonfunctional TFBS. We interrogated the role of flanking sequences near Activator Protein 1 (AP-1) binding sites that reside in DNase I Hypersensitive Sites (DHS) and regions annotated as Enhancers. In these regions, we found that sequence features directly adjacent to the core motif distinguish high from low activity AP-1 sites. Some nearby features are motifs for other TFs that genetically interact with the AP-1 site. Other features are extensions of the AP-1 core motif, which cause the extended sites to match motifs of multiple AP-1 binding proteins. Computational models trained on these data distinguish between sequences with high and low activity AP-1 sites and also predict changes in cis-regulatory activity due to mutations in AP-1 core sites and their flanking sequences. Our results suggest that extended AP-1 binding sites, together with adjacent binding sites for additional TFs, encode part of the information that governs TFBS activity in the genome.

The histone modification state of genomic regions is hypothesized to reflect the regulatory activity of the underlying genomic DNA. Based on this hypothesis, the ENCODE Project Consortium measured the status of multiple histone modifications across the genome in several cell types and used these data to segment the genome into regions with different predicted regulatory activities. We measured the cis-regulatory activity of more than 2000 of these predictions in the K562 leukemia cell line. We tested genomic segments predicted to be Enhancers, Weak Enhancers, or Repressed elements in K562 cells, along with other sequences predicted to be Enhancers specific to the H1 human embryonic stem cell line (H1-hESC). Both Enhancer and Weak Enhancer sequences in K562 cells were more active than negative controls, although surprisingly, Weak Enhancer segmentations drove expression higher than did Enhancer segmentations. Lower levels of the covalent histone modifications H3K36me3 and H3K27ac, thought to mark active enhancers and transcribed gene bodies, associate with higher expression and partly explain the higher activity of Weak Enhancers over Enhancer predictions. While DNase I hypersensitivity (HS) is a good predictor of active sequences in our assay, transcription factor (TF) binding models need to be included in order to accurately identify highly expressed sequences. Overall, our results show that a significant fraction (∼26%) of the ENCODE enhancer predictions have regulatory activity, suggesting that histone modification states can reflect the cis-regulatory activity of sequences in the genome, but that specific sequence preferences, such as TF-binding sites, are the causal determinants of cis-regulatory activity.