Perspectives on ENCODE

The ENCODE Project Consortium, Snyder MP, Gingeras TR, Moore JE, Weng Z, Gerstein MB, Ren B, Hardison RC, Stamatoyannopoulos JA, Graveley BR, Feingold EA, Pazin MJ, Pagan M, Gilchrist DA, Hitz BC, Cherry JM, Bernstein BE, Mendenhall EM, Zerbino DR, Frankish A, Flicek P, Myers RM.
Nature. 2020-07-29;583:693-698.
Abstract
The Encylopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project launched in 2003 with the long-term goal of developing a comprehensive map of functional elements in the human genome. These included genes, biochemical regions associated with gene regulation (for example, transcription factor binding sites, open chromatin, and histone marks) and transcript isoforms. The marks serve as sites for candidate cis-regulatory elements (cCREs) that may serve functional roles in regulating gene expression1. The project has been extended to model organisms, particularly the mouse. In the third phase of ENCODE, nearly a million and more than 300,000 cCRE annotations have been generated for human and mouse, respectively, and these have provided a valuable resource for the scientific community.