Authors: Ivan Garcia-Bassets and Dong Wang

Ivan Garcia-Bassets

Corresponding author: ibassets@ucsd.edu
Department of Medicine; School of Medicine; University of California, San Diego; La Jolla, CA USA

Dong Wang

Department of Basic Medical Sciences; School of Medicine; Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Abstract:
Mammalian genomes contain thousands of cis-regulatory elements for each transcription factor (TF), but TFs only occupy a relatively small subset referred to as cistrome. Recent studies demonstrate that a TF cistrome might differ among different organisms, tissue types and individuals. In a cell, a TF cistrome might differ among different physiological states, pathological stages and between physiological and pathological conditions. It is, therefore, remarkable how highly plastic these binding profiles are, and how massively they can be reprogrammed in rapid response to intra/extracellular variations and during cell identity transitions and evolution. Biologically, cistrome reprogramming events tend to be followed by changes in transcriptional outputs, thus serving as transformative mechanisms to synchronically alter the biology of the cell. In this review, we discuss the molecular basis of cistrome plasticity and attempt to integrate the different mechanisms and biological conditions associated with cistrome reprogramming. Emerging data suggest that, when altered, these reprogramming events might be linked to tumor development and/or progression, which is a radical conceptual change in our mechanistic understanding of cancer and, potentially, other diseases.

Received: June 11, 2012; Accepted: June 26, 2012; Published Online: August 16, 2012

Preview: