Functional Characterisation of Active Enhancers in Human Astrocytes Using a High-throughput CRISPRi Screen

We used CROP-seq to perform a high-throughput, parallel screen of 979 candidate enhancer perturbations in normal human astrocytes (NHAs), a primary cell-line. We identified the target gene(s) for 145 of these candidates, which were enriched for transcription with eRNA, transcription factor footprinting, and superenhancer annotation. Most regulatory interactions were <50kb, targeting the nearest gene in ~50% of cases, but were not typically captured by eQTL or in silico predictions. These data elucidate the regulatory network of an understudied-but-crucial brain cell-type.