Enhancers, gene regulation, and genome organization

Abstract

How transcriptional enhancers function to activate distant genes has been the subject of lively investigation for decades. “Enhancers, gene regulation, and genome organization” was the subject of a virtual meeting held November 16–17, 2020, under sponsorship of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The goal of the meeting was to advance an understanding of how transcriptional enhancers function within the framework of the folded genome as we understand it, emphasizing how levels of organization may influence each other and may contribute to the spatiotemporal specification of transcription. Here we focus on broad questions about enhancer function that remain unsettled and that we anticipate will be central to work in this field going forward. Perforce, we cover contributions of only some speakers and apologize to other contributors in vital areas that we could not include because of space constraints.