Summary The incorporation of histone H3 variants has been implicated in the epigenetic memory of cellular state. Using genome editing with zinc finger nucleases to tag endogenous H3.3, we report genome-wide profiles of H3 variants in mammalian embryonic stem (ES) cells and neuronal precursor cells. Genome-wide patterns of H3.3 are dependent on amino acid sequence, and change with cellular differentiation at developmentally regulated loci. The H3.3 chaperone Hira is required for H3.3 enrichment at active and repressed genes. Strikingly, Hira is not essential for localization of H3.3 at telomeres and many transcription factor binding sites. Immunoaffinity purification and mass spectrometry reveal that the proteins Atrx and Daxx associate with H3.3 in a Hira-independent manner. Atrx is required for Hira-independent localization of H3.3 at telomeres, and for the repression of telomeric RNA. Our data demonstrate that multiple and distinct factors are responsible for H3.3 localization at specific genomic locations in mammalian cells.

Since the publication of the human reference genome, the identities of specific genes associated with human diseases are being discovered at an enormous rate. A central problem is that the biological activity of these genes is often unclear. Detailed investigations in vertebrate model organisms, typically mice, have been essential for understanding the activities of many orthologues of these disease-associated genes. Although gene-targeting approaches1-3 and phenotype analysis have led to a detailed understanding of nearly 6,000 protein-coding genes3,4, this number falls significantly short of all >22,000 mouse protein-coding genes5. Similarly, in zebrafish genetics, one-by-one gene studies using positional cloning6, insertional mutagenesis7-9, antisense morpholino oligonucleotides10, targeted re-sequencing11-13 and zinc finger and TAL endonucleases14-17 have made significant contributions to our understanding of the biological activity of vertebrate genes, but the number of genes studied again falls well short of the >26,000 zebrafish protein-coding genes18. Importantly, for both mice and zebrafish, none of these strategies is particularly suited to the rapid generation of knockouts in thousands of genes and the assessment of their biological activity. Enabled by a well-annotated zebrafish reference genome sequence18,19, high-throughput sequencing and efficient chemical mutagenesis, we describe an active project that aims to identify and phenotype disruptive mutations in every zebrafish protein-coding gene. Thus far we have identified potentially disruptive mutations in more than 38% of all known protein coding genes. We have developed a multi-allelic phenotyping scheme to efficiently assess the effects of each allele during embryogenesis and have analysed the phenotypic consequences of over 1000 alleles. All mutant alleles and data are available to the community and our phenotyping scheme is adaptable to phenotypic analysis beyond embryogenesis.

Gene expression during development and differentiation is regulated in a cell- and stage-specific manner by complex networks of intergenic and intragenic cis-regulatory elements whose numbers and representation in the genome far exceed those of structural genes. Using chromosome conformation capture, it is now possible to analyze in detail the interaction between enhancers, silencers, boundary elements and promoters at individual loci, but these techniques are not readily scalable. Here we present a high-throughput approach (Capture-C) to analyze cis interactions, interrogating hundreds of specific interactions at high resolution in a single experiment. We show how this approach will facilitate detailed, genome-wide analysis to elucidate the general principles by which cis-acting sequences control gene expression. In addition, we show how Capture-C will expedite identification of the target genes and functional effects of SNPs that are associated with complex diseases, which most frequently lie in intergenic cis-acting regulatory elements.