Mikhail Spivakov "Determinants of enhancer-promoter connectivity"

Enhancer elements play key roles in gene control, particularly in development and in response to environmental cues. A remarkable feature of these elements is that they can localise up to megabases away from their target genes, coming into their proximity through 3D chromosomal contacts. Mechanisms behind these contacts, however, remain not fully understood and appear to be more complex than initially thought. I will summarise our lab’s work on this topic over the last decade and present our unpublished findings on the mechanisms and function of contacts formed by poised enhancers in human pluripotency.