Vincent Liu

All Publications

• Compatibility rules of human enhancer and promoter sequences. Nature Bergman, D. T., Jones, T. R., Liu, V., Ray, J., Jagoda, E., Siraj, L., Kang, H. Y., Nasser, J., Kane, M., Rios, A., Nguyen, T. H., Grossman, S. R., Fulco, C. P., Lander, E. S., Engreitz, J. M. 2022

  Abstract

  Gene regulation in the human genome is controlled by distal enhancers that activate specific nearby promoters1. One model for this specificity is that promoters might have sequence-encoded preferences for certain enhancers, for example mediated by interacting sets of transcription factors or cofactors2. This "biochemical compatibility" model has been supported by observations at individual human promoters and by genome-wide measurements in Drosophila3-9. However, the degree to which human enhancers and promoters are intrinsically compatible has not been systematically measured, and how their activities combine to control RNA expression remains unclear. Here we designed a high-throughput reporter assay called ExP STARR-seq (enhancer x promoter self-transcribing active regulatory region sequencing) and applied it to examine the combinatorial compatibilities of 1,000 enhancer and 1,000 promoter sequences in human K562 cells. We identify simple rules for enhancer-promoter compatibility: most enhancers activated all promoters by similar amounts, and intrinsic enhancer and promoter activities combine multiplicatively to determine RNA output (R2=0.82). In addition, two classes of enhancers and promoters showed subtle preferential effects. Promoters of housekeeping genes contained built-in activating motifs for factors such as GABPA and YY1, which decreased the responsiveness of promoters to distal enhancers. Promoters of variably expressed genes lacked these motifs and showed stronger responsiveness to enhancers. Together, this systematic assessment of enhancer-promoter compatibility suggests a multiplicative model tuned by enhancer and promoter class to control gene transcription in the human genome.

  View details for DOI 10.1038/s41586-022-04877-w

  View details for PubMedID 35594906

• Mitochondrial variant enrichment from high-throughput single-cell RNA sequencing resolves clonal populations. Nature biotechnology Miller, T. E., Lareau, C. A., Verga, J. A., DePasquale, E. A., Liu, V., Ssozi, D., Sandor, K., Yin, Y., Ludwig, L. S., El Farran, C. A., Morgan, D. M., Satpathy, A. T., Griffin, G. K., Lane, A. A., Love, J. C., Bernstein, B. E., Sankaran, V. G., van Galen, P. 2022

  Abstract

  The combination of single-cell transcriptomics with mitochondrial DNA variant detection can be used to establish lineage relationships in primary human cells, but current methods are not scalable to interrogate complex tissues. Here, we combine common 3' single-cell RNA-sequencing protocols with mitochondrial transcriptome enrichment to increase coverage by more than 50-fold, enabling high-confidence mutation detection. The method successfully identifies skewed immune-cell expansions in primary human clonal hematopoiesis.

  View details for DOI 10.1038/s41587-022-01210-8

  View details for PubMedID 35210612

• The emergent landscape of the mouse gut endoderm at single-cell resolution NATURE Nowotschin, S., Setty, M., Kuo, Y., Liu, V., Garg, V., Sharma, R., Simon, C. S., Saiz, N., Gardner, R., Boutet, S. C., Church, D. M., Hoodless, P. A., Hadjantonakis, A., Pe'er, D. 2019; 569 (7756): 361-+

  Abstract

  Here we delineate the ontogeny of the mammalian endoderm by generating 112,217 single-cell transcriptomes, which represent all endoderm populations within the mouse embryo until midgestation. We use graph-based approaches to model differentiating cells, which provides a spatio-temporal characterization of developmental trajectories and defines the transcriptional architecture that accompanies the emergence of the first (primitive or extra-embryonic) endodermal population and its sister pluripotent (embryonic) epiblast lineage. We uncover a relationship between descendants of these two lineages, in which epiblast cells differentiate into endoderm at two distinct time points-before and during gastrulation. Trajectories of endoderm cells were mapped as they acquired embryonic versus extra-embryonic fates and as they spatially converged within the nascent gut endoderm, which revealed these cells to be globally similar but retain aspects of their lineage history. We observed the regionalized identity of cells along the anterior-posterior axis of the emergent gut tube, which reflects their embryonic or extra-embryonic origin, and the coordinated patterning of these cells into organ-specific territories.

  View details for DOI 10.1038/s41586-019-1127-1

  View details for Web of Science ID 000468123700030

  View details for PubMedID 30959515

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC6724221