We are happy to share our new preprint led by collaborators from Berkeley, Tsung-Han Stanley Hsieh, Claudia Cattoglio, Elena Slobodyanyuk (now MIT Biology), wherein we combine acute protein depletion methods with high-resolution Micro-C and super-resolution microscopy to study the role of key 3D genome regulators - CTCF, Cohesin, WAPL, and YY1 - in regulating Enhancer-Promoter (E-P) interactions. Surprisingly, none of these factors are required for the short-term maintenance of E-P interactions except for a handful of genes/loci. These results are consistent with a "time-buffering" model where these architectural factors may play a role in the establishment (and perhaps long-term maintenance) of E-P interactions and gene expression programs, but where these architectural proteins play essentially no role in the short-term maintenance of E-P interactions.
The preprint can be found on BioRxiv.