A few families of transposable elements (TEs) have been shown to evolve into -regulatory elements (CREs). Here, to extend these studies to all classes of TEs in the human genome, we identified widespread enhancer-like repeats (ELRs) and find that ELRs reliably mark cell identities, are enriched for lineage-specific master transcription factor binding sites, and are mostly primate-specific. In particular, elements of MIR and L2 TE families whose abundance co-evolved across chordate genomes, are found as ELRs in most human cell types examined. MIR and L2 elements frequently share long-range intra-chromosomal interactions and binding of physically interacting transcription factors. We validated that eight L2 and nine MIR elements function as enhancers in reporter assays, and among 20 MIR-L2 pairings, one MIR repressed and one boosted the enhancer activity of L2 elements. Our results reveal a previously unappreciated co-evolution and interaction between two TE families in shaping regulatory networks.
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6314169 | PMC |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/gr.235747.118 | DOI Listing |
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