Enhancer control of oncogenic growth

EBV Super Enhancers

Studies of EBV-activated super-enhancers, enhancer RNAs, and oncogene regulation in lymphoblastoid cells.

Overview

EBV Super Enhancers

Super-enhancers are clusters of regulatory elements with unusually strong transcription-factor and histone-acetylation signals. In EBV-transformed cells, viral and host transcription factors organize super-enhancers near genes such as MYC and BCL2, helping establish growth and survival programs.

  • Identified EBV oncoprotein super-enhancers in lymphoblastoid cells.
  • Linked EBV super-enhancer activity to B-cell growth and survival genes.
  • Studied enhancer RNAs from EBV super-enhancers and their role in MYC expression.
  • Connected viral transcriptional programs with host enhancer biology.
EBV Super Enhancers figure

Publications

Related work

Representative publications connected to this project.

2015

Epstein-Barr virus oncoprotein super-enhancers control B cell growth.

Zhou H, Schmidt SC, Jiang S, Willox B, Bernhardt K, Liang J, Johannsen EC, Kharchenko P, Gewurz BE, Kieff E, Zhao B.

Cell Host Microbe. 2015;17(2):205-216.

DOIPubMed
2016

Epstein-Barr virus super-enhancer eRNAs are essential for MYC oncogene expression and lymphoblast proliferation.

Liang J, Zhou H, Gerdt C, Tan M, Colson T, Kaye KM, Kieff E, Zhao B.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016;113(49):14121-14126.

2017

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma super-enhancer-driven ETV6 correlates with prognosis.

Ke L, Zhou H, Wang C, Xiong G, Xiang Y, Ling Y, Khabir A, Tsao GS, Zeng Y, Zeng M, Busson P.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017;114(36):9683-9688.