An evolutionary perspective of regulatory landscape dynamics in development and disease

Abstract

The organization of animal genomes into topologically associating domains (TADs) provides a structural scaffold in which cis-regulatory elements (CREs) operate on their target genes. Determining the position of CREs and genes relative to TADs has become instrumental to trace gene expression changes during evolution and in diseases. Here we will review recent studies and discuss TADs as structural units with respect to their conservation and stability during genome reorganization. Furthermore, we describe how TAD restructuring contributed to morphological novelties during evolution but also their deleterious effects associated with disease. Despite considering TADs as structural units, the nested and dynamic scaffold within TADs contribute to tissue-specific gene expression, implying that such changes can also contribute to gene expression differences during evolution.