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start / graph / ana-q110-h3k9-writer-and-reader-occupancy-at-the-kmt2a-locus

Analysismoderate confidence 3 of 5: One strong study, or several smaller consistent ones.Q110-h3k9me3-writer-layer

RUN: ten ENCODE peak sets and fourteen signal tracks read at the KMT2A locus in two blood cells - not one called peak for SETDB1, CBX5, CBX1, CBX3 or TRIM28 anywhere in the gene, while G9a/EHMT2 and TRIM28 both sit on the KMT2A PROMOTER and neither touches the breakpoint cluster region

also called Q110 ENCODE occupancy read · G9a sits on the KMT2A promoter · no writer peak at the KMT2A locus

Nobody had ever looked in the public data to see whether the enzymes that write the H3K9 silencing tag, or the protein that reads it, actually sit on the KMT2A gene in a blood cell. They do not. But the enzyme this graph says protects the gene when you remove it, G9a, does sit there - at the gene's switch, not at the part that breaks.

The same thing, for a scientist

**Two instruments, one question, and they disagree about how much they can answer.** **The peak instrument carries the result.** Ten conservative-IDR peak sets (`peaks.py`) in K562 and GM12878, GRCh38 native: | target | peak sets | genome-wide peaks | peaks in the 90 kb *KMT2A* gene | in the 7,466 bp BCR | in the 1,048 bp element | ZNF274 gene body (positive control) | |---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:| | **SETDB1** | 3 (2 labs) | 1,615 / 3,753 / 1,660 | **0 / 0 / 0** | 0 | 0 | 2 / 2 / 0 | | **CBX5** | 2 (K562, **GM12878**) | 5,299 / 12,351 | **0 / 0** | 0 | 0 | 0 / 1 | | CBX1 | 1 | 10,229 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | | CBX3 | 2 | 754 / 280 | 0 / 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 / 0 | | **EHMT2 (G9a)** | 1 | 14,904 | **1** | **0** | **0** | 0 | | TRIM28 | 1 | 12,075 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | **Zero peaks in the *KMT2A* gene for every H3K9me3 writer and every HP1 paralogue tested, in both blood cells, across ten peak sets - and zero even in the gene plus 50 kb on each side for all of them.** The positive control passes: SETDB1 and TRIM28 have peaks in the *ZNF274* gene body, the canonical ZNF274-TRIM28-SETDB1-ATRX target class, and so do CBX1, CBX3 and CBX5-in-GM12878. **THE POSITIVE RESULT, and it is about the enzyme this graph's rearrangement mechanism names.** G9a/EHMT2 has one peak inside the gene and six within the gene ±50 kb, and they are **clustered at the promoter, not at the breakpoint**: chr11:118,434,740-118,435,115 (signal 218.5, the strongest), 118,434,925-118,435,309, 118,435,992-118,436,376 and 118,437,444-118,437,828, bracketing the Ensembl canonical TSS at 118,436,492, plus one at 118,415,716-118,416,100 about 20 kb upstream. **TRIM28 sits at the same two places** - 118,436,029-118,436,453 at the promoter and 118,415,740-118,416,164 at the same upstream element - and these are the only two H3K9-machinery addresses at this locus in either blood cell. **The nearest of them is 46 kb from the BCR and 51 kb from the exon-11 CTCF element.** **The signal instrument answers nothing, and its own pre-registered controls say so.** Fourteen fold-change-over-control tracks (`run.py`), complete run, no failed tracks. Of six tracks to which the ZNF positive control applied, **two passed**; of fourteen, the dynamic-range control passed in **two**. Two SETDB1 tracks read the *GAPDH* promoter at **6.76x and 5.98x** the chr11 mean - the declared negative is the most enriched interval in the track. And **no target's replicates agree on direction** at the BCR or the element: SETDB1's BCR folds are 1.01, 0.89, 1.43, 0.68, 0.79 with element folds spanning 0.24 to 2.35; CBX5's BCR folds are 1.23, 0.85, 1.05, 1.10. **So the correct verdict from the signal arm is that no occupancy statement is available from it**, which is why the peak arm is the one quoted. **A defect found in the controls of a sibling analysis while running this one.** Both scripts inherited a window labelled *ZNF274* at chr19:57,996,000-58,000,000 from `analyses/k562-h3k9me1-over-the-kmt2a-bcr/run.py`. Resolved live, **ZNF274 is ENSG00000171606 at GRCh38 chr19:58,183,029-58,215,964 and GRCh37 chr19:58,694,396-58,724,928** - 187 kb and 698 kb away. The window is not ZNF274 in either assembly; it is a generic chr19q13.43 zinc-finger-cluster window, H3K9me3-high, which is why it passed as a *mark* control and returns **zero peaks for every protein tested**.

Facts and figures
scriptanalyses/q110-h3k9-writer-and-reader-at-the-kmt2a-locus/peaks.py (peak level, the instrument that answers) and analyses/q110-h3k9-writer-and-reader-at-the-kmt2a-locus/run.py (signal level, which does not)
statusrun
run date2026-09-22
run byQ110-h3k9me3-writer-layer
complete runtrue
assemblyGRCh38 native for every file - nothing lifted, so the 129,285 bp GRCh38-to-GRCh37 offset and the HG122_PATCH double-mapping are removed as error sources entirely
coordinate provenanceKMT2A intervals reused verbatim from analyses/q108-gse210480-h3k9me3-kmt2a-bcr/coords.json, which re-derived them from Ensembl canonical ENST00000534358 and fixed the DCAL exon frame by three base-pair identities against Meyer's published recombinome subregion lengths. Canonical gene chr11:118,436,492-118,526,832; BCR core chr11:118,482,422-118,489,887 (7,466 bp); exon-11 CTCF element chr11:118,488,159-118,489,206 (1,048 bp).
localizationchromatin at chr11q23.3 - the KMT2A gene, its promoter, its 7,466 bp breakpoint cluster region and its 1,048 bp exon-11 CTCF/RAD21/SMC3 element, plus 50 kb flanks; and chr19q13.43 (ZNF274), chr12 (GAPDH) and a chr2 gene desert as controls
subnuclear localizationnot measured. A ChIP peak is a linear-genome address and carries no compartment information, and no imaging, Hi-C or nuclear-compartment assay has ever placed the KMT2A anchor relative to the lamina or a speckle in any cell type.
cell typeK562 (CML-derived erythroleukaemia, BCR::ABL1 positive, aneuploid) and GM12878 (EBV-immortalised lymphoblastoid). Both are blood cells; NEITHER is KMT2A-rearranged and neither is a CD34+ or fetal progenitor. That substitution is this analysis's principal weakness and it is the same substitution the cycle-59 K562 H3K9me1 analysis had to make.
cell stateunperturbed, proliferating culture. No damage arm, no knockdown arm, no cell-cycle synchronisation - and all three matter here, because the writers' documented recruitment to this class of element is damage-conditional and cell-cycle-gated.
epigenetic readoutoccupancy of H3K9me3 writers (SETDB1), the H3K9me1/2 writer G9a/EHMT2, the three HP1 readers (CBX5, CBX1, CBX3) and the KAP1/TRIM28 scaffold - the protein layer behind mark-h3k9me1, mark-h3k9me2 and mark-h3k9me3, measured at the locus the marks were measured at.
shown for fusionNO - neither cell line carries a KMT2A fusion, and nothing here is in a KMT2A-rearranged or infant cell. The G9a and TRIM28 promoter occupancy is in K562, which is BCR::ABL1-driven.
absence classmeasured-not-analysed
absence class noteMIGRATED 2026-09-23, mechanically and not by judgement: the class string's own first word is this token. The field previously held the whole verdict as free text and that string is preserved here verbatim because it says more than the token can: 'measured-not-analysed - the data were deposited and public, and this is the analysis nobody had run'
results
[
  "analyses/q110-h3k9-writer-and-reader-at-the-kmt2a-locus/results_peaks.json",
  "analyses/q110-h3k9-writer-and-reader-at-the-kmt2a-locus/results.json"
]
failed tracks
[]
what encode actually has
{
  "queried": "type=Experiment, assay_title=TF ChIP-seq, status=released, per target label, 2026-09-22",
  "SUV39H1": 0,
  "SUV39H2": 0,
  "SETDB1": 5,
  "CBX5": 4,
  "CBX1": 2,
  "CBX3": 4,
  "EHMT2": 3,
  "TRIM28": 5,
  "consequence": "the H3K9me3 writer at the centre of this graph's dispute cannot be asked of this archive in any cell type. Everything below is about the writer that CAN be asked (SETDB1), the reader (CBX5), and four comparators."
}
peak level result
{
  "instrument": "conservative IDR thresholded peak sets of each experiment's default analysis, or the single-replicate IDR thresholded set where no conservative set exists (ENCSR000AUT SETDB1 and ENCSR000ATV CBX3 - flagged, they carry less reproducibility weight)",
  "why_this_is_the_stronger_instrument": "an IDR peak is reproducibility-thresholded, so a call already encodes replicate agreement, which the continuous signal does not; and the genome-wide peak count supplies the null, so 'one peak in a 90 kb window' can be read against the right order of magnitude",
  "per_target": {
    "SETDB1": {
      "sets": [
        "ENCSR000EWD/ENCFF397SBJ",
        "ENCSR000EWI/ENCFF243RJQ",
        "ENCSR000AUT/ENCFF267QRI"
      ],
      "biosample": "K562 x3, two labs (Farnham USC x2, Bernstein Broad x1)",
      "genome_wide_peaks": [
        1615,
        3753,
        1660
      ],
      "peaks_in_kmt2a_gene": [
        0,
        0,
        0
      ],
      "peaks_in_bcr": [
        0,
        0,
        0
      ],
      "peaks_in_ctcf_element": [
        0,
        0,
        0
      ],
      "peaks_in_gene_plus_50kb": [
        0,
        0,
        0
      ],
      "peaks_in_znf274_gene_body": [
        2,
        2,
        0
      ],
      "expected_in_gene_under_uniform_placement": [
        0.051,
        0.117,
        0.052
      ]
    },
    "CBX5": {
      "sets": [
        "ENCSR272JAT/ENCFF813SKN",
        "ENCSR372GIN/ENCFF241KGK"
      ],
      "biosample": "K562 and GM12878 - the lymphoblastoid line is the closest lineage match any archive offers this project for this machinery",
      "genome_wide_peaks": [
        5299,
        12351
      ],
      "peaks_in_kmt2a_gene": [
        0,
        0
      ],
      "peaks_in_bcr": [
        0,
        0
      ],
      "peaks_in_ctcf_element": [
        0,
        0
      ],
      "peaks_in_gene_plus_50kb": [
        0,
        0
      ],
      "peaks_in_znf274_gene_body": [
        0,
        1
      ],
      "expected_in_gene_under_uniform_placement": [
        0.165,
        0.385
      ]
    },
    "CBX1": {
      "genome_wide_peaks": [
        10229
      ],
      "peaks_in_kmt2a_gene": [
        0
      ],
      "peaks_in_znf274_gene_body": [
        3
      ]
    },
    "CBX3": {
      "genome_wide_peaks": [
        754,
        280
      ],
      "peaks_in_kmt2a_gene": [
        0,
        0
      ],
      "peaks_in_znf274_gene_body": [
        2,
        0
      ]
    },
    "EHMT2": {
      "sets": [
        "ENCSR175EOM/ENCFF373EMV"
      ],
      "biosample": "K562",
      "genome_wide_peaks": [
        14904
      ],
      "peaks_in_kmt2a_gene": [
        1
      ],
      "peaks_in_bcr": [
        0
      ],
      "peaks_in_ctcf_element": [
        0
      ],
      "peaks_in_gene_plus_50kb": [
        6
      ],
      "peaks_in_znf274_gene_body": [
        0
      ],
      "expected_in_gene_under_uniform_placement": [
        0.464
      ]
    },
    "TRIM28": {
      "sets": [
        "ENCSR474CVP/ENCFF382UDO"
      ],
      "biosample": "K562",
      "genome_wide_peaks": [
        12075
      ],
      "peaks_in_kmt2a_gene": [
        0
      ],
      "peaks_in_bcr": [
        0
      ],
      "peaks_in_ctcf_element": [
        0
      ],
      "peaks_in_gene_plus_50kb": [
        2
      ],
      "peaks_in_znf274_gene_body": [
        2
      ],
      "expected_in_gene_under_uniform_placement": [
        0.376
      ]
    }
  },
  "the_two_addresses_that_do_exist": {
    "EHMT2_peaks_within_kmt2a_plus_50kb": [
      {
        "interval": "chr11:118,434,740-118,435,115",
        "signalValue": 218.47,
        "where": "promoter, 1.4 kb upstream of the canonical TSS - the strongest of the six"
      },
      {
        "interval": "chr11:118,434,925-118,435,309",
        "signalValue": 31.01,
        "where": "promoter, overlapping the above"
      },
      {
        "interval": "chr11:118,435,992-118,436,376",
        "signalValue": 59.17,
        "where": "promoter, immediately 5' of the TSS at 118,436,492"
      },
      {
        "interval": "chr11:118,437,444-118,437,828",
        "signalValue": 48.85,
        "where": "inside the gene, +952 to +1,336 from the TSS - the only peak of any target inside the gene"
      },
      {
        "interval": "chr11:118,415,716-118,416,100",
        "signalValue": 117.71,
        "where": "a discrete element about 20 kb upstream of the gene"
      },
      {
        "interval": "chr11:118,573,148-118,573,532",
        "signalValue": 57.68,
        "where": "about 46 kb downstream of the gene end"
      }
    ],
    "TRIM28_peaks_within_kmt2a_plus_50kb": [
      {
        "interval": "chr11:118,436,029-118,436,453",
        "signalValue": 44.56,
        "where": "promoter, immediately 5' of the TSS - overlapping EHMT2's 118,435,992-118,436,376 peak"
      },
      {
        "interval": "chr11:118,415,740-118,416,164",
        "signalValue": 51.46,
        "where": "the SAME upstream element as EHMT2's 118,415,716-118,416,100 peak"
      }
    ],
    "distance_from_the_nearest_of_them_to_the_BCR_bp": 44594,
    "distance_from_the_nearest_of_them_to_the_ctcf_element_bp": 50331,
    "reading": "G9a/EHMT2 and TRIM28/KAP1 co-occupy the KMT2A PROMOTER and a shared element about 20 kb upstream in K562, and nothing in this machinery is detectable at the breakpoint cluster region or the exon-11 CTCF anchor. These are the first and only locus-resolved H3K9-machinery occupancy facts at the KMT2A locus in any cell type."
  },
  "positive_control_P1": {
    "declared_before_the_numbers": "SETDB1 and TRIM28 must have peaks in the ZNF274 3' zinc-finger region, the canonical ZNF274-TRIM28-SETDB1-ATRX target class (PMID 27029610)",
    "result_at_the_3prime_6.5kb_subwindow": "FAILS for all - that sub-window is too narrow to be the right test",
    "result_at_the_ZNF274_GENE_BODY_chr19_58183029_58215964": "PASSES - SETDB1 2/2/0, TRIM28 2, CBX1 3, CBX3 2/0, CBX5 0/1",
    "verdict": "the peak sets do detect the canonical target class at gene-body scale, so the KMT2A zeros are interpretable. ENCSR000AUT (the single-replicate SETDB1 set) has 0 and is the one set whose zero at KMT2A carries no weight."
  }
}
signal level result and why it answers nothing
{
  "instrument": "14 per-biological-replicate fold-change-over-control GRCh38 bigWigs from each experiment's default analysis, read by HTTP range request; interval mean over the track's own chr11 mean, plus a percentile rank against a declared 20 Mb local window binned at each interval's own width",
  "complete_run": true,
  "bin_check_ran_first": "modal run 1-4 bp in every track, so these are base-resolution files and the 1,048 bp and 147 bp intervals are real measurements - unlike GSE210480's 1 kb bins where a 147 bp query returns one value",
  "acceptance_tests": {
    "P1_znf_control_applicable_to": 6,
    "P1_passed": 2,
    "P2_dynamic_range_passed_of_14": 2,
    "worst_case": "two SETDB1 tracks (ENCSR000EWI reps 1 and 2) read the GAPDH promoter at 6.76x and 5.98x the chr11 mean - the declared NEGATIVE control is the most enriched interval in the track"
  },
  "replicate_disagreement": {
    "SETDB1_bcr_folds": [
      1.0095,
      0.8906,
      1.4304,
      0.6787,
      0.7918
    ],
    "SETDB1_element_folds": [
      0.9399,
      0.2405,
      2.3526,
      1.4345,
      0.7156
    ],
    "CBX5_bcr_folds": [
      1.233,
      0.8533,
      1.0488,
      1.0951
    ],
    "CBX5_element_folds": [
      1.2187,
      0.7148,
      1.2038,
      1.5735
    ],
    "no_target_agrees_on_direction_at_the_bcr_or_the_element": true
  },
  "the_one_thing_the_signal_arm_does_support": "the whole-gene folds are tightly near 1 in every track (SETDB1 0.94-1.08, CBX5 0.91-1.30, TRIM28 1.26, EHMT2 1.25), which is what 'indistinguishable from input across 90 kb' looks like and is consistent with the peak zeros rather than in tension with them",
  "verdict": "NO occupancy statement is available from the signal arm. It is reported in full because a failed instrument is a result, and because the next person to reach for these fold-change tracks should know what they contain."
}
the control defect found in a sibling analysis
{
  "what": "a window labelled ZNF274 at chr19:57,996,000-58,000,000, inherited by this beat's two scripts from analyses/k562-h3k9me1-over-the-kmt2a-bcr/run.py, where the key is 'ZNF274_h3k9me3_positive'",
  "the_truth": "ZNF274 is ENSG00000171606 at GRCh38 chr19:58,183,029-58,215,964 (+ strand) and GRCh37 chr19:58,694,396-58,724,928, resolved live from Ensembl on 2026-09-22",
  "distance": "187 kb from the gene in GRCh38, 698 kb in GRCh37 - not ZNF274 in either assembly",
  "why_it_passed_anyway_in_the_sibling": "the window lies inside the chr19q13.43 zinc-finger cluster, which is H3K9me3-high, so it functions as a generic heterochromatin MARK control while being useless as a protein-specific one. Its peak count is 0 for all ten peak sets here.",
  "which_entries_are_affected": "ana-h3k9me1-depletion-over-the-kmt2a-bcr-replicates-in-a-blood-cell-but-not-at-the-element reports a 'ZNF274_h3k9me3_site' row (rep_a 0.873, rep_b 0.7818) whose reading - 'an H3K9me3 site is NOT H3K9me1-enriched, as it should not be' - is about a chr19 ZNF-cluster window and not about ZNF274. The conclusion is probably unaffected, because the window is heterochromatic either way; the LABEL is wrong.",
  "which_entries_are_NOT_affected": "Q108's analyses resolve ZNF274 by symbol through Ensembl in lift.py rather than hardcoding a coordinate, so Q108's 3.76x ZNF274-body figure is about the real gene and stands.",
  "what_this_beat_did": "peaks.py reads the corrected ZNF274 coordinates AND the inherited window, labelled for what it is; run.py keeps the inherited window unchanged so results.json stays reproducible, with a comment in the source saying to read that row as 'a chr19 ZNF-cluster window'."
}
what this closes and what it does not
{
  "closed": "the archive half of absence-no-h3k9-writer-or-reader-localised-at-the-kmt2a-locus for SETDB1 and CBX5. The answer in two blood cells is NO CALLED PEAK anywhere in the KMT2A gene or within 50 kb of it.",
  "opened": "G9a/EHMT2 and TRIM28 occupancy at the KMT2A promoter, which nobody has reported and which this graph now holds as a measurement",
  "not_closed_and_not_closable_here": "SUV39H1, for which no ENCODE experiment exists in any cell type; and the disease question, because K562 is a CML-derived erythroleukaemia line and GM12878 an EBV-immortalised lymphoblastoid line, NEITHER KMT2A-REARRANGED and neither a CD34+ progenitor",
  "not_addressed_at_all": "the damage state. Both writers are recruited to double-strand breaks transiently and released on ATM-mediated KAP1 phosphorylation, so a resting-state peak absence is exactly what hyp-the-writer-reaches-the-kmt2a-anchor-only-through-ctcf-and-only-after-the-break predicts, and this analysis cannot distinguish that hypothesis from simple absence."
}
second cell type cycle 74
{
  "g9a_at_the_promoter_confirmed": "EHMT2/G9a reads 95.82 / 95.83 / 87.55 / 97.76 at the KMT2A promoter against MCF-7 CTCF anchors - a second cell type agreeing with this entry's promoter observation",
  "BUT_THE_PROMOTER_STATISTIC_CANNOT_DISCRIMINATE": "the same beat found that in an input-free deposit EVERY antibody reads high at an active promoter: 20 protein tracks at 95.8-99.8, panel median 96.87, with G9a BELOW it. Scored instead against the promoters of the 2,000 highest-expressed MCF-7 genes, the panel separates - TRIM28 98.80-99.35, CBX5 91.05-94.50, EHMT2 87.60-88.65, KDM4C 78.35, and KDM4B collapses to 58.60 (1.05x, background). So G9a IS at this promoter above background, but any promoter claim in this entry scored against a CTCF-anchor null is uninformative and should be re-read against expressed promoters.",
  "the_upstream_element_does_NOT_reproduce": "this entry's chr11:118,415,7xx upstream element does not reproduce in MCF-7. Recorded as a failure to replicate in a second cell type, not as a refutation - the original observation was in a different lineage and the element may be cell-type restricted.",
  "resolved_by": "the cycle-68 beat; recorded by the king 2026-09-23"
}
How this could bite us back
  • THIS DOES NOT EXONERATE ANY H3K9 INTERVENTION AND IT MUST NOT BE READ AS DOING SO. 'No SETDB1 or HP1-alpha peak at the KMT2A locus in K562 or GM12878' says nothing about fusion-target promoters, nothing about a KMT2A-rearranged blast, and nothing about the damage state. It is the same class of transfer that risk-the-h3k9me3-exoneration-of-g9a-inhibition-is-epithelial-only exists to block, with a blood cell substituted for an epithelial one - which fixes the lineage objection and leaves the other three standing.
  • The G9a promoter finding is an OCCUPANCY fact and not a target nomination. It is one peak set, one cell line, no functional test, in a BCR::ABL1-driven line rather than a KMT2A-rearranged one, and it sits 45 kb from the element the rearrangement mechanism is about. Anyone tempted to read it as support for prophylactic G9a inhibition should note that it locates G9a at the promoter of the gene the strategy is trying to protect, which if anything raises the question of what G9a inhibition does to KMT2A's own expression - a question nobody has asked and this analysis cannot answer.
  • A peak absence is a threshold artefact waiting to happen. Ten peak sets with genome-wide counts from 280 to 12,351 were compared as though they were equivalent instruments; the 280-peak CBX3 set and the 12,351-peak CBX5 set do not have the same sensitivity, and the smallest sets' zeros are the least informative. The uniform-placement expectations in the data block are there so nobody quotes a zero from a 280-peak set as though it were a zero from a 12,000-peak one.
Still open
  1. Is the SETDB1 and CBX5 absence at this locus a resting-state property or an absence full stop? A damage arm - AsiSI, a CRISPR cut at the element, or simply etoposide - would separate simple absence from the CTCF-recruited, damage-conditional recruitment that hyp-the-writer-reaches-the-kmt2a-anchor-only-through-ctcf-and-only-after-the-break predicts. Nothing in any archive has that arm at this locus.
  2. What is G9a/EHMT2 doing at the KMT2A promoter, and does it matter for the BCR 45 kb away? This is the first locus-resolved H3K9-machinery occupancy fact at the KMT2A locus in any cell type, and the founding mechanism's G9a effects are all at the BCR and its flanks. A G9a knockdown with H3K9me1 read at both the promoter and the BCR in one cell would say whether the two are connected.
  3. Is the EHMT2-plus-TRIM28 co-occupancy at the KMT2A promoter specific, or do those two proteins share most active promoters in K562? The genome-wide overlap of the two peak sets was not computed and it is one bedtools call - without it, the shared promoter and shared upstream element are a coincidence this entry cannot rule out.
  4. Does the element 20 kb upstream of KMT2A, chr11:118,415,7xx-118,416,1xx, have any other annotation? Both EHMT2 and TRIM28 have a peak there and this graph holds no entry for it. It is 20 kb from a locus this project has characterised to the base pair.
  5. Would the same read in a KMT2A-rearranged line change the answer? No archive holds SETDB1 or CBX5 ChIP in one, so this needs wet work - and the lineage substitution here (K562, GM12878) is the same one the cycle-59 H3K9me1 analysis had to make and carries the same cost.
Every source behind this entry (3)
  1. E1strong confidence 4 of 5: Replicated in peer-reviewed work by more than one group.dataset

    Across ten ENCODE conservative-IDR peak sets in K562 and GM12878, there is not one called peak for SETDB1, CBX5, CBX1, CBX3 or TRIM28 anywhere in the 90,341 bp KMT2A gene, in its 7,466 bp breakpoint cluster region, at its 1,048 bp exon-11 CTCF element, or within 50 kb of the gene on either side - against genome-wide peak counts of 280 to 12,351 per set. The pre-registered positive control passes at gene-body scale: SETDB1 has 2, 2 and 0 peaks in the ZNF274 gene body (GRCh38 chr19:58,183,029-58,215,964), TRIM28 2, CBX1 3, CBX3 2 and 0, CBX5 0 and 1, consistent with the canonical ZNF274-TRIM28-SETDB1-ATRX target class. G9a/EHMT2 is the single exception at the locus, with one peak inside the gene and six within the gene plus 50 kb.

    What this evidence cannot show

    A peak set is a thresholded call, so this is an absence ABOVE THRESHOLD and not an absence of protein. Two of the ten sets (ENCSR000AUT SETDB1, ENCSR000ATV CBX3) have only a single replicate and no conservative set, so their zeros carry less weight - and ENCSR000AUT is also the one SETDB1 set that fails the ZNF274 control, so its KMT2A zero should be discounted entirely. The uniform-placement expectations (0.009 to 0.464 peaks per 90 kb) are a crude null: peaks are not uniformly distributed and an open gene body has a higher prior than the genome average, so they bound the order of magnitude and are not p-values. K562 is CML-derived erythroleukaemia and GM12878 an EBV-immortalised lymphoblastoid line; NEITHER IS KMT2A-REARRANGED.

    Evidence that argues against this (2)
    • A resting-state absence is exactly what this beat's own hypothesis predicts for a different reason, so it does not discriminate. If the writers reach this element only through CTCF and only after a double-strand break (PMIDs 42475683, 24927542), then unperturbed K562 cells should show no peak whether or not the mechanism operates - and that reading would make this analysis a confirmation of the hypothesis rather than evidence of absence. The two cannot be separated without a damage arm.
    • H3K9me3 coexists with active transcription at ZNF 3' exons (PMID 27029610), which is a reminder that the relationship between these proteins' peaks and the marks at a locus is not one to one. The marks HAVE been measured at this locus - H3K9me1 is depleted over the BCR in K562 - so the mark is present as a regional property while no writer peak is callable, and this analysis cannot say which writer produced it.
  2. E2moderate confidence 3 of 5: One strong study, or several smaller consistent ones.dataset

    G9a/EHMT2 and TRIM28/KAP1 co-occupy the KMT2A PROMOTER and a shared element about 20 kb upstream in K562, and neither is detectable at the breakpoint cluster region or the exon-11 CTCF anchor. EHMT2's six peaks within the gene plus 50 kb are chr11:118,434,740-118,435,115 (signalValue 218.5), 118,434,925-118,435,309 (31.0), 118,435,992-118,436,376 (59.2), 118,437,444-118,437,828 (48.8), 118,415,716-118,416,100 (117.7) and 118,573,148-118,573,532 (57.7); the first four bracket the Ensembl canonical TSS at chr11:118,436,492 and the fourth is the only peak of any target inside the gene. TRIM28's two are chr11:118,436,029-118,436,453 (44.6), overlapping EHMT2's third peak at the promoter, and 118,415,740-118,416,164 (51.5), overlapping EHMT2's upstream element. The nearest of these addresses is 44.6 kb from the BCR and 50.3 kb from the exon-11 element.

    What this evidence cannot show

    One peak set per protein, so there is no cross-experiment replication of either - the IDR threshold encodes replicate agreement within the experiment and nothing more. EHMT2 has 14,904 peaks genome-wide and TRIM28 12,075, so a promoter peak in a 90 kb window is not by itself surprising (uniform-placement expectation 0.46 and 0.38 peaks per window); what is informative is the SHAPE - a cluster at the promoter and the shared upstream element, with nothing at the BCR. Confidence is moderate rather than strong because it is an occupancy call in one cell line with no functional test, and because K562 is BCR::ABL1-driven rather than KMT2A-rearranged. Neither protein's signal-level track passed this analysis's dynamic-range control, so the peak calls are the only usable readout for them.

    Evidence that argues against this (3)
    • EHMT2's occupancy at the KMT2A promoter does NOT support the published mechanism in the way it first appears to. mechanism-h3k9me1-2-ctcf-balance-gates-kmt2a-rearrangement has G9a acting on H3K9me1/2 across the BREAKPOINT CLUSTER REGION and its flanks, and G9a over-expression alone causing rearrangement. G9a's only detectable address here is 45 to 53 kb away at the promoter - so either its effect on BCR methylation is indirect or diffuse, or it acts at the BCR below peak-calling threshold. A promoter peak is not evidence for a BCR mechanism and this entry does not offer it as one.
    • EHMT2 fails the ZNF274 control (0 peaks) - which is expected, because G9a is not a member of the ZNF274-TRIM28-SETDB1 complex, so that control was never applicable to it. But it means the EHMT2 peak set has no independent positive control in this analysis, and its 14,904 peaks are the only evidence that it worked.
    • Both proteins occupy a promoter in a cell line where KMT2A is transcribed, and TRIM28 with 12,075 peaks is a promiscuous KRAB-ZFP scaffold. A shared promoter and a shared upstream element could reflect a general co-occurrence of these two proteins at active promoters rather than anything specific to KMT2A, and this analysis did not test that - the genome-wide overlap of the two peak sets was not computed.
  3. E3strong confidence 4 of 5: Replicated in peer-reviewed work by more than one group.dataset

    The signal-level arm of this analysis fails its own pre-registered controls and yields no occupancy statement. Fourteen fold-change-over-control GRCh38 tracks were read to completion with no failed tracks; the bin check passed everywhere (modal run 1-4 bp, so the 1,048 bp and 147 bp intervals are genuine measurements); and then of the six tracks to which the ZNF positive control applied only two passed, of fourteen the dynamic-range control passed in only two, and two SETDB1 tracks read the GAPDH promoter at 6.76x and 5.98x the chr11 mean - the declared negative being the most enriched interval in the track. No target's replicates agree on direction at the BCR or at the element: SETDB1's BCR folds are 1.01, 0.89, 1.43, 0.68 and 0.79 with element folds from 0.24 to 2.35, and CBX5's BCR folds are 1.23, 0.85, 1.05 and 1.10. The one thing the arm does support is that whole-gene folds sit tightly near 1 in every track (SETDB1 0.94-1.08, CBX5 0.91-1.30), which is what 'indistinguishable from input across 90 kb' looks like.

    What this evidence cannot show

    This is a negative result about an INSTRUMENT, not about biology, and it is reported so that the next beat reaching for these fold-change files knows what is in them. Two design decisions are worth knowing: the percentile nulls are computed inside a declared 20 Mb local window rather than over the whole chromosome, because two whole-chromosome versions of this script had to be abandoned on cost, and the interval NORMALISER is still the track's whole-chr11 mean so that folds stay comparable with the sibling K562 H3K9me1 analysis. The ZNF window used by the signal arm is the mislabelled one described in data.the_control_defect_found_in_a_sibling_analysis, so its P1 result is uninterpretable in either direction - the P2 and replicate-disagreement failures stand on their own.

    Evidence that argues against this (2)
    • A fold-change-over-control track can fail a locus-level control and still be fit for the purpose ENCODE processed it for, which is peak calling - and the peak sets derived from these same experiments DO pass the ZNF274 control. So this entry's own signal-arm failure is an argument that the interval-fold method inherited from the sibling K562 analysis is the weaker instrument for a protein ChIP, not that the experiments are bad.
    • Reporting 'no statement available' from an arm that read to completion is a judgement, and a reader could reasonably take the whole-gene folds near 1 as a weak positive result for absence rather than as nothing. The entry takes the conservative reading; someone willing to accept a 90 kb average as the readout would say the signal arm agrees with the peak arm.
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