TY - JOUR T1 - A role for YY1 in sex-biased transcription revealed through X-linked promoter activity and allelic binding analyses JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/044172 SP - 044172 AU - Chih-yu Chen AU - Wenqiang Shi AU - Allison M. Matthews AU - Yifeng Li AU - David J. Arenillas AU - Anthony Mathelier AU - Masayoshi Itoh AU - Hideya Kawaji AU - Timo Lassmann AU - FANTOM Consortium AU - Yoshihide Hayashizaki AU - Piero Carninci AU - Alistair R. R. Forrest AU - Carolyn J. Brown AU - Wyeth W. Wasserman Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/03/21/044172.abstract N2 - Sex differences in susceptibility and progression have been reported in numerous diseases. Female cells have two copies of the X chromosome with X-chromosome inactivation imparting mono-allelic gene silencing for dosage compensation. However, a subset of genes, named escapees, escape silencing and are transcribed bi-allelically resulting in sexual dimorphism. Here we conducted analyses of the sexes using human datasets to gain perspectives in such regulation. We identified transcription start sites of escapees (escTSSs) based on higher transcription levels in female cells using FANTOM5 CAGE data. Significant over-representations of YY1 transcription factor binding motif and ChIP-seq peaks around escTSSs highlighted its positive association with escapees. Furthermore, YY1 occupancy is significantly biased towards the inactive X (Xi) at long non-coding RNA loci that are frequent contacts of Xi-specific superloops. Our study elucidated the importance of YY1 on transcriptional activity on Xi in general through sequence-specific binding, and its involvement at superloop anchors. ER -