Sustained MYB activity drives emergent enhancer activation and precise enhancer-promoter interactions [RNA-seq]

MYB is a critical hematopoietic TF that is frequently dysregulated in cancer. Despite its well-established role, the exact mechanisms by which MYB influences enhancer function—and the specific stages of enhancer activation at which it operates—remain poorly understood.

Using high resolution Micro-Capture-C, we show that upon MYB degradation, highly defined enhancer-promoter interactions at specific MYB binding sites are lost. Loss of these interactions, together with other hallmarks of enhancer activity—reduced H3 lysine-27 acetylation and enhancer RNA transcription—correlates with significant downregulation of target gene expression in leukemia, indicating that MYB mediates transcription activation via maintenance of enhancer function.