News & views Africa usually coincides with the end of the wet Barnabas H. Daru is in the Department of enhancer and a particular gene5–7. season in this region, when annual grass seeds Life Sciences, Texas A&M University-Corpus Study of the 3D organization of genomes are in abundance. It will be worth investigat- Christi, Corpus Christi, Texas 78412, USA. has been revolutionized by an approach ing whether migratory birds in the Southern e-mail: [email protected] called chromosome conformation capture Hemisphere also influence the redistribution (3C), which enables researchers to infer the of plant communities during global warm- 1. Jordano, P., García, C., Godoy, J. A. & García-Castaño, J. L. frequencies of interactions between different ing. Likewise, exploring the long-distance Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 104, 3278–3282 (2007). DNA regions8. Such approaches indicate that 2. González-Varo, J. P. et al. Nature 595, 75–79 (2021). dispersal of seeds of aquatic plants, such as 3. Viana, D. S., Santamaría, L. & Figuerola, J. Trends Ecol. enhancer–gene interactions occur preferen- 10 seagrasses by water birds, is another area Evol. 31, 763–775 (2016). tially in ‘insulated’ genomic neighbourhoods for future research that might benefit from 4. Lehouck, V., Spanhove, T. & Lens, L. Plant Ecol. Evol. 144, in the nucleus called topologically associating 96–100 (2011). 9 González-Varo and colleagues’ methods. 5. Shikang, S., Fuqin, W. & Yuehua, W. Sci. Rep. 5, 11615 domains (TADs) . Most TADs are formed by the This study provides a great example of how (2015). cooperative action of a DNA-binding protein migratory birds might assist plant redistribu- 6. Jordano, P. in Seeds: The Ecology of Regeneration in Plant termed CTCF and a ring-shaped protein com- Communities 3rd edn (ed. Gallagher, R. S.) 18–61 (CAB tion to new locations that would normally be Int., 2014). plex called cohesin, which is a type of molecu- difficult for them to reach on their own, and 7. Dingle, H. Migration: The Biology of Life on the Move lar motor that drives a process known as loop which might offer a suitable climate. As the (Oxford Univ. Press, 2014). extrusion10. In this process, cohesin engages 8. Bairlein, F. Science 354, 547–548 (2016). planet warms, understanding how such bio- 9. Daru, B. H., Farooq, H., Antonelli, A. & Faurby, S. Nature DNA and extrudes it, in a similar way to how logical mechanisms reorganize plant commu- Commun. 11, 2115 (2020). threading yarn through the eye of a needle nities complements the information available 10. Rock, B. M. & Daru B. H. Front. Mar. Sci. 8, 608867 (2021). forms a loop (Fig. 1). This extrusion continues from climate-projection models, which offer The author declares no competing interests. until cohesin encounters DNA bound to CTCF, predictions of future species distributions. This article was published online on 23 June 2021. which forms a ‘roadblock’ for loop extrusion, stopping it. Chromosome biology TADs are thought to ‘trap’ genes and enhanc- ers by thwarting DNA interactions across TAD borders, thereby increasing the probability that matching enhancer–gene pairs find each Base-pair view of gene and other. However, until now, 3C technology has been unable to define the nature of the phys- enhancer interactions ical contacts between genes and enhancers on the base-pair scale — this would be on a par Anne van Schoonhoven & Ralph Stadhouders with the precision with which interactions between DNA and the key transcription factors A technique reveals how folded chromosomal DNA interacts in influencing gene expression have been deter- the nucleus, providing information at the level of single base mined. Hua et al. now close this resolution gap pairs. The achievement offers an unprecedented level of detail by developing a version of 3C that the authors call Micro-Capture-C (MCC). about how gene activity is regulated. See p.125 Building on their previously developed version of 3C methodology11, the authors made key technical refinements that How can 2 metres of DNA fit into a nucleus sequences of DNA, termed enhancers, which strikingly improved the resolution of the that has an average diameter of only 10 micro- are highly abundant in our genomes. Accord- DNA inter actions that could be identified. metres? Almost all the cells in our body face ing to current estimates2, there are up to Like all 3C techniques, MCC captures inter- this storage conundrum, which has intrigued 810,000 enhancers across the human genome. actions through chemical crosslinking, scientists for decades. Moreover, this compac- Enhancers are bound by the ‘bookkeepers’ which generates bonds between interacting tion tour de force folds DNA in the nucleus in of gene expression: DNA-binding proteins regions of DNA. The crosslinked DNA is then a way that is far from random. The pattern of called transcription factors, which bind to cut into smaller fragments, after which the DNA folding is important for many processes short motifs of DNA sequences corresponding inter actions are captured by gluing together that involve our genome, including the reg- (ligating) interacting DNA strands that are ulation of expression of our approximately close to each other in the nuclear space. 20,000 genes. On page 125, Hua et al.1 describe “This level of detail will For the pair of molecular ‘scissors’ that a method they have developed to monitor 3D enable high-resolution cuts DNA into small fragments, MCC uses genome architecture. This information can dissection of processes the enzyme micrococcal nuclease (MNase), pinpoint genomic interactions at the level of which fragments DNA in a mainly random single base pairs of DNA. It suggests new ways involving gene regulation.” fashion, independently of DNA sequences. of thinking about how gene expression is con- This enables the generation of much smaller trolled, and opens up exciting possibilities for DNA fragments than those obtained using future research. to 6–12 base pairs3. Enhancers can be located sequence-specific enzymes for DNA diges- Humans and other organisms have evolved far from the gene(s) that they regulate, and tion. The approach helps to increase the res- complex mechanisms to precisely regulate how they stimulate gene expression is a major olution — as previously shown for another gene expression. Different types of cell express topic of research4. The current leading model version of 3C technology12. Crucially, Hua different sets of genes, and these expression is that enhancers and genes are brought into and colleagues show that DNA fragmentation patterns might depend on a cell’s function, closer spatial proximity by specific patterns by MNase does not have any major biases in or arise in response to environmental cues, of DNA folding, enabling transcription factors terms of the DNA that is digested, with a minor such as viral infection. Central to the con- to stimulate gene expression despite large preference for less-condensed DNA (charac- trol of gene expression are short regulatory intervening genomic distances between an teristic of regions containing genes being 36 | Nature | Vol 595 | 1 July 2021 ©2021 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All rights reserved. ©2021 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All rights reserved. aids enhancer–gene interactions. Enhancer 1 Gene X Enhancer 2 Gene Y Although, at first glance, the individ- ual technological innovations in the MCC method might not seem revolutionary, when Stem cell Erythroid cell Transcription combined, they offer something the field factors has long been waiting for: a way to precisely detect which DNA bases mediate long-range T A G C A T T A T A C G T A A T genomic interactions. This level of detail will A T T A G C G C enable high-resolution dissection of processes G C T A T A T A C G G C A T C G involving gene regulation, including those T A A T A T T A found in complex genomic regions containing Cohesin multiple genes and regulatory elements, and where enhancer–gene interactions occur over CTCF short ranges (less than 20 kilobases of DNA). Although Hua and colleagues’ method does not allow genome-scale analyses, the approach Gene X expressed Gene Y expressed might be adapted to make this possible in the future. Moreover, the base-pair resolution that MCC offers makes it an attractive tool for investigating how regulatory proteins set up Figure 1 | Monitoring genomic folding. Hua et al.1 have developed a new version of a method termed and maintain 3D genome architecture. chromosome conformation capture (3C), called Micro-Capture-C (MCC). This method can identify MCC is also ideally suited to the search regions of interacting DNA that are far apart in the linear genome sequence, such as enhancers (regulatory for links between disease-associated genet- sequences that can promote gene expression) and genes. MCC can pinpoint interactions between base ic-sequence variants in regulatory elements pairs of DNA from different parts of the genome, which is substantially more precise than was previously and their target genes. Given that such varia- possible for other types of 3C. The authors used MCC to study stem cells and erythroid cells (precursor red tion can disrupt the binding of transcription blood cells) in mice. Their findings provide evidence for distinct base-pair patterns of gene and enhancer factors and often has subtle effects on gene interactions in different cell types. The results are consistent with a model in which DNA from distant expression, the quantitative nature and foot- genomic locations is brought into close proximity by a ring-shaped protein complex called cohesin, which 10 printing capacity of MCC would be extremely helps to generate DNA loops . The DNA-binding protein CTCF organizes these loops into ‘insulated’ genomic neighbourhoods, within which interactions occur10.