Cell study maps the adult human brain's regulatory genome across 750,000 cells
anshulkundaje · x · 2026-11-13
A new Cell paper maps the regulatory genome of the adult human brain using Droplet Paired-Tag on 3 donors, 18 regions, and 750,000+ cells, jointly profiling snRNA-seq and histone marks (H3K27ac/H3K27me3), integrated with chromatin accessibility, DNA methylation, chromatin interactions, and spatial transcriptomics.
Key outputs:
- Cell-type-specific epigenomic landscapes and ChromHMM chromatin state annotations separating active from repressive elements
- Polycomb-associated developmental memory: H3K27me3 encodes trajectories from neural progenitors to mature neurons, linked to long-range loops in neurodegeneration
- EpiBRAIN, an ML model predicting cell-type-specific effects of disease variants
- Evolutionary divergence of repressive chromatin between human and mouse
A major resource for understanding how brain cells maintain identity for decades and how disease-risk variants act.
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