Minor Loops in Major Folds: Enhancer-Promoter Looping, Chromatin Restructuring, and Their Association with Transcriptional Regulation and Disease

The organization and folding of chromatin within the nucleus can determine the outcome of gene expression. Recent technological advancements have enabled us to study chromatin interactions in a genome-wide manner at high resolution. These studies have increased our understanding of the hierarchy and dynamics of chromatin domains that facilitate cognate enhancer-promoter looping, defining the transcriptional program of different cell types. In this review, we focus on vertebrate chromatin long-range interactions as they relate to transcriptional regulation. In addition, we describe how the alteration of boundaries that mark discrete regions in the genome with high interaction frequencies within them, called topological associated domains (TADs), could lead to various phenotypes, including human diseases, which we term as TADopathies.