The H3K9 machinery's address at KMT2A is the PROMOTER, not the exon-11 breakpoint anchor: G9a, HP1a and KAP1 all read the top decile of active promoters there in MCF-7 and KAP1's peak replicates a K562 peak to 267 bp, while five proteins across five cell types are ORDINARY or absent at the anchor - so every H3K9-directed intervention this graph has discussed is aimed 52 kb from where the machinery is
also called the machinery is at the wrong end of the gene · promoter, not breakpoint · the H3K9 axis needs re-aiming
Every drug idea this project has raised for the silencing machinery at KMT2A assumed the machinery sits where the gene breaks. It does not seem to; it sits on the gene's on-switch, 52,000 bases away. If that holds, those drugs would change how much KMT2A is made rather than how stable its breakpoint is.
The same thing, for a scientist
**The observation that generates it, assembled from four beats.** | protein | at the exon-11 anchor (146 bp) | at the *KMT2A* promoter | cell types | |---|---|---|---| | EHMT2/G9a | **ORDINARY**, median 33.42, 0 of 4 tracks > 75 | **87.60th-88.65th percentile of 2,000 ACTIVE promoters**, 1.34-1.44x median | MCF-7 (signal), K562 (peak) | | CBX5/HP1a | **DEPLETED**, median 23.94 | **91.05th-94.50th percentile of active promoters**, 1.53-1.71x | MCF-7 | | TRIM28/KAP1 | **NEITHER** (3 of 4 > 81 but non-anchor median 65.87); **zero called peaks within 52 kb** | **98.80th-99.35th percentile of active promoters**, ~3x median, plus a called peak that overlaps a K562 TRIM28 peak by **267 bp** | MCF-7, K562 | | SUV39H1 | NEITHER (Q114); NOT OCCUPIED in glioma | not reported | MCF-7, SU-DIPG13/36 | | SETDB1 | no called peak in the gene or within 50 kb, 3 peak sets, 2 labs | not reported | K562 | | H3K9me3 | **DEPLETED - an explicit 0.0000 in 7 of 8 MCF-7 tracks** | 0.00-77.17, median 46.09 | MCF-7, and depleted in 4 lineages | **Five proteins, five cell types, three labs, two assay formats. Nothing in the H3K9 layer exceeds the 75th percentile of same-cell-type CTCF anchors at the exon-11 anchor by a rule that also requires specificity. Three of them are in the top decile of active promoters at the promoter** [E1]. **The statement.** The H3K9 writer-reader-scaffold module has a constitutive address at the *KMT2A* **promoter**, conserved between an erythroleukaemia line and a breast carcinoma line, and **no address at the exon-11 CTCF anchor in any cell type in which it has been looked for.** The breakpoint region's H3K9 state is therefore not maintained by machinery resident there. **Why it matters therapeutically, which is the whole point.** Every H3K9-directed intervention in this corpus - `drug-unc0642` (dual G9a/GLP), `risk-the-h3k9me3-exoneration-of-g9a-inhibition-is-epithelial-only`, `risk-an-h3k9-axis-inhibitor-given-with-a-top2-poison-removes-a-repair-licence`, the SUV39H1 arm of `mark-h3k9me3` - is argued as an effect on **breakpoint stability**. If the enzymes are at the promoter, the proximal effect of any of them is on ***KMT2A*'s own transcription**, and raising wild-type *KMT2A* expression in a cell at risk of a *KMT2A* translocation is an effect with **no established sign anywhere in this corpus** [E2]. **Prior: 0.35, and the reason it is not higher is a control that does not exist.** Every protein antigen in the deposit reads the whole *KMT2A* locus elevated - six-non-anchor-interval medians 49.79 to 72.37 across eight antigens - which is the signature of a locus-level property rather than of eight proteins. **The promoter claim survives an active-promoter null; the panel cannot tell a shared artefact from a shared complex, and neither of the two deposits that exist has an input track** [E3].
What would have to be true, and what already is
Prediction 1 - the promoter address survives input normalisation. An input or IgG arm for GSE139196, or a fresh input-controlled ChIP in MCF-7. Not tested. This is the decisive one and it is the cheapest.
Prediction 2 - the promoter address is present in a KMT2A-rearranged B-lineage cell and the anchor address is still absent. exp-q116-the-h3k9-module-at-the-kmt2a-promoter-read-in-a-kmt2a-rearranged-cell-with-an-input-arm is the design. Not tested in any archive.
Prediction 3 - a G9a/GLP inhibitor changes KMT2A transcript level, and does so more than it changes breakpoint-region chromatin. Directly testable with UNC0642 and RT-qPCR plus a ChIP-qPCR at the two addresses. This graph already records that drug-unc0642's in vivo result has no pharmacodynamic measurement at all, so the proximal-effect question is open for that compound in any case.
Prediction 4 - the H3K9me1/me2 state, which is what G9a actually writes, is higher at the KMT2A promoter than at the exon-11 anchor. Untested and untestable from any existing deposit: neither GSE139196 nor GSE225028 contains an H3K9me1 or H3K9me2 track, and absence-no-h3k9me1-or-h3k9me2-in-a-cd34-progenitor-in-the-ihec-federation records the blood gap. The enzyme has now been placed at this promoter in two cell types and its mark has never been measured there in either.
Partly already true, and it is the strongest leg: the TRIM28 promoter peak was found independently in K562 by Q110 (ENCODE conservative IDR, ENCSR474CVP) and in MCF-7 here (HOMER, GSM5660804/805), overlapping by 267 bp, and G9a's four strongest KMT2A-region K562 peaks bracket the same TSS.
How it could be wrong in a way that matters
The most likely failure is technical and it is named in the evidence: the KMT2A promoter is an active promoter, and active promoters are ChIP-hot for everything. Against same-cell-type CTCF anchors, all 12 protein tracks in this deposit read 87.55-99.91 at this promoter with a panel median of 96.87. The promoter claim only survives because a third pass scored it against the promoters of the 2,000 highest-expressed genes instead - and an active-promoter null re-bases the artefact rather than removing it. A hyper-ChIPable promoter can be in the top decile of hyper-ChIPable promoters.
The second failure is scale and direction. An enzyme at a promoter 52 kb from a breakpoint is not obviously irrelevant to the breakpoint: chromatin states spread, and the KMT2A gene body between them is the interval this project's own methyl-poor-domain claim is about. "Not resident at the anchor" is not "cannot affect the anchor", and this hypothesis's therapeutic clause quietly assumes it is.
The third failure is that the anchor negative is a resting-state negative. Both SUV39H1 and SETDB1 are recruited to double-strand breaks transiently and released on ATM-mediated KAP1-S824 phosphorylation. hyp-the-writer-reaches-the-kmt2a-anchor-only-through-ctcf-and-only-after-the-break predicts exactly the absence observed here, and no measurement in this corpus has a damage arm. If that hypothesis is right, the machinery's address at the anchor exists only in the state nobody has measured, and this one is a statement about unperturbed culture.
| statement | The H3K9 writer-reader-scaffold module (EHMT2/G9a, CBX5/HP1a, TRIM28/KAP1) has a constitutive address at the KMT2A PROMOTER, conserved between MCF-7 and K562, and no address at the exon-11 CTCF anchor in any cell type in which it has been looked for - so the proximal effect of any H3K9-directed agent at this locus is on KMT2A transcription rather than on breakpoint-region chromatin. |
|---|---|
| origin | data-pattern |
| prior probability | 0.35 |
| cell type | generated in MCF-7 (ER+ breast adenocarcinoma) and K562 (BCR::ABL1 erythroleukaemia); the claim is about any human cell |
| lineage | generated in breast carcinoma and erythroleukaemia - NEITHER haematopoietic-progenitor nor KMT2A-rearranged |
| shown for fusion | NO - no H3K9 writer, reader or scaffold has ever been localised at this locus in a KMT2A-rearranged cell of any lineage |
| epigenetic readout | occupancy of the H3K9 writer, reader and scaffold layer at the KMT2A promoter versus the exon-11 CTCF anchor |
| absence class | never-measured |
| absence class note | The decisive test - an input-controlled measurement of this module at this locus in a KMT2A-rearranged cell - has never been attempted in any archive. The MCF-7 and K562 arms were measured-not-analysed and are now closed. |
| panel median provenance | C5/C5b PANEL MEDIANS ARE QUOTED AT THE FINAL 28-TRACK COUNT (2026-09-23). Earlier drafts of this entry quoted them at intermediate counts (12, 18 or 25 tracks) while the run was still going. The gene-body panel median moved 61.80 -> 61.39; the PROMOTER panel median moved 82.36 -> 96.87, i.e. UP, and the direction matters: at 96.87 the CTCF-anchor percentile at the KMT2A promoter is even less informative than the first draft said, and the promoter claim rests ENTIRELY on the active-promoter null of deviation D9. |
predictions
[ "The promoter address survives input normalisation: in an input-controlled ChIP or CUT&RUN in MCF-7, the KMT2A promoter remains above the 85th percentile of active-gene promoters for EHMT2, CBX5 and TRIM28 while the 90 kb gene body falls below the 60th.", "In a KMT2A-rearranged B-lineage cell (SEM or RS4;11), the same three proteins read above the 85th percentile of that cell's active-gene promoters at the KMT2A promoter and below the 75th percentile of that cell's own CTCF anchors at the 146 bp exon-11 window.", "A G9a/GLP inhibitor at prophylactic-equivalent exposure changes KMT2A transcript level by more than 1.3-fold while changing H3K9me1/me2 at the exon-11 anchor by less than 1.3-fold, in the same experiment.", "H3K9me1 or H3K9me2 at the KMT2A promoter is above the 75th percentile of active-gene promoters in any cell type where it is measured, while at the exon-11 anchor it is below the 50th." ]
experiments
[ "exp-q116-the-h3k9-module-at-the-kmt2a-promoter-read-in-a-kmt2a-rearranged-cell-with-an-input-arm", "exp-q114-a-suv39h1-cutandrun-in-a-cd34-progenitor-and-a-kmt2a-rearranged-line" ]
analyses
[ "ana-q116-the-h3k9-repressive-module-converges-on-the-kmt2a-promoter-in-mcf7-and-none-of-it-is-at-the-breakpoint", "ana-q116-kap1-has-a-called-peak-on-the-kmt2a-promoter-in-mcf7-and-none-within-52-kb-of-the-anchor", "ana-q116-trim28-comes-closer-to-firing-at-the-exon-11-anchor-than-anything-yet-and-the-specificity-clause-blocks-it", "ana-q116-g9a-sits-on-the-kmt2a-promoter-in-mcf7-and-is-ordinary-at-the-exon-11-anchor" ]
falsifiers
[ "An INPUT-CONTROLLED ChIP or CUT&RUN in MCF-7 in which the KMT2A promoter falls BELOW the 75th percentile of active-gene promoters for EHMT2, CBX5 and TRIM28 after input normalisation kills the promoter half of this hypothesis outright. The promoter claim currently rests on a null (2,000 active-gene promoters) that re-bases the hyper-ChIPable-promoter artefact rather than removing it, and no input track exists in either deposit that holds these data.", "Any measurement placing an H3K9 writer, reader or scaffold ABOVE the 75th percentile of same-cell-type CTCF anchors at the 146 bp exon-11 window (GRCh38 chr11:118,488,614-118,488,760) in >= 60% of at least four tracks, with the median of the six non-anchor KMT2A intervals BELOW the 50th percentile in the same tracks, in any human cell type, kills the breakpoint half. PARTLY CASHED, CYCLE 68, AND IT CAME CLOSE: TRIM28 reached 90.62, 81.85 and 89.45 in three of four MCF-7 tracks - clearing the 60% clause - and failed on a six-non-anchor median of 65.87. The hypothesis survives on the specificity clause alone in that one antigen.", "A G9a/GLP inhibitor that moves H3K9me1 or H3K9me2 at the 146 bp exon-11 anchor by MORE than 1.5-fold while moving KMT2A transcript level by LESS than 1.3-fold, in a haematopoietic cell, refutes the therapeutic clause - because it would show the agent acts at the breakpoint rather than at the promoter. Neither measurement exists for any G9a agent in any cell type; drug-unc0642's in vivo result carries no pharmacodynamic measurement at all.", "A damage-state measurement (ionising radiation or a TOP2 poison, any timepoint) that places SUV39H1, SETDB1, EHMT2 or TRIM28 above the 75th percentile of same-cell-type CTCF anchors at the exon-11 window would not refute this hypothesis but would make it irrelevant, because it would mean the anchor address exists in the state that matters and every measurement behind this hypothesis is of the state that does not." ]
C5 final 28 track values
{
"panel_median_kmt2a_gene_percentile": 61.39,
"panel_median_kmt2a_promoter_percentile": 96.87,
"per_antigen_median_promoter_percentile_vs_CTCF_anchors": {
"TRIM28": 99.8,
"CBX5_mut4E": 99.75,
"KDM4B": 99.37,
"KDM4C": 98.47,
"CBX5_mut4A": 96.76,
"CBX5": 96.65,
"EHMT2": 95.83,
"H3K9me3": 29.43
},
"reading": "every PROTEIN antigen reads 95.8-99.8 at the KMT2A promoter against CTCF anchors and only the histone mark (29.43) does not - so that statistic cannot discriminate between proteins at all, and every promoter claim in this beat rests on the ACTIVE-PROMOTER null instead"
}- If this is right, the therapeutic risk in this graph's H3K9 arms does not go away - it MOVES to a worse-characterised place. A G9a/GLP inhibitor or a KAP1 disruptor acting at the KMT2A promoter would change wild-type KMT2A expression, and in a KMT2A-rearranged cell it would change the fusion allele's 5' promoter too, since the fusion retains KMT2A's own promoter. Those two effects have opposite expected signs for the disease and nothing in this corpus predicts the net.
- If this is wrong because the anchor address is damage-conditional, then the prophylactic use of a G9a inhibitor alongside a TOP2 poison - which is what the founding mechanism's protective arm proposes - is being given exactly when the machinery IS at the anchor, and an occupancy negative measured in unperturbed culture would have been the most misleading possible basis for reassurance.
- The hypothesis rests on a promoter claim that survives one null and has no input control. Acting on it before prediction 1 is tested would be acting on the possibility that three antibodies and a peak caller agree about an active promoter for the same technical reason.
- Does an input track exist for GSE139196? Prediction 1 is the decisive test and the submitters generated input for the ChIRC-seq arm by their own processing notes. This is a one-email question and it gates everything else here.
- Does the promoter module do anything to KMT2A transcription? KMT2A is expressed at 32.94 TPM in MCF-7 with the whole repressive module on its promoter. That is either a poised state or an irrelevance, and occupancy cannot tell them apart. The deposit contains Pol II and H3K4me3 tracks in the same cells that this beat did not read.
- If the machinery is at the promoter and the founding mechanism's genetics are causal at the breakpoint, how does the effect travel 52 kb? The obvious candidate is the mark rather than the enzyme - but H3K9me1 and H3K9me2, G9a's actual products, have never been measured anywhere in this 90 kb in any cell type.
- Is the whole thing a resting-state artefact of the only state anybody has measured? Every measurement behind this hypothesis is unperturbed proliferating culture, and hyp-the-writer-reaches-the-kmt2a-anchor-only-through-ctcf-and-only-after-the-break predicts exactly the anchor absence observed. One damage arm would separate the two hypotheses and none exists.
- E1moderate confidence 3 of 5: One strong study, or several smaller consistent ones.dataset
In MCF-7, EHMT2/G9a reads the 87.60th-88.65th, CBX5/HP1a the 91.05th-94.50th and TRIM28/KAP1 the 98.80th-99.35th percentile of the 2,000 highest-expressed genes' promoters at the KMT2A promoter, while at the 146 bp exon-11 anchor G9a is ORDINARY (median 33.42), CBX5 DEPLETED (23.94) and TRIM28 NEITHER with zero called peaks within 52,149 bp. SUV39H1 (Q114) and SETDB1 and the three HP1 paralogues (Q110) are also ORDINARY or absent at the anchor in three further cell types.
analyses/q116-h3k9-axis-at-the-locus/results_promoter_specificity.json, results_scored.json and results_kap1_peaks.json; with ana-q110-h3k9-writer-and-reader-occupancy-at-the-kmt2a-locus and ana-q114-in-mcf7-the-whole-kmt2a-locus-is-elevated-and-the-anchor-is-not-picked-out · Q116-h3k9-axis-at-the-locus, Q110-h3k9me3-writer-layer, Q114-suv39h1-at-the-locus · oncofusion-knowledge-graph / NCBI GEO GSE139196 2026What this evidence cannot show
MCF-7 and K562 - an ER+ breast adenocarcinoma and a BCR::ABL1 erythroleukaemia line. NEITHER is KMT2A-rearranged and neither is a progenitor. No input, no IgG, no antibody clone in either deposit. The C4 instrument control has failed in seven of seven cell types tested, so no verdict at the anchor is labelled a class-matched positive. The active-promoter null uses ENCODE MCF-7 RNA-seq (ENCFF251DYL), a different culture in a different laboratory from the ChIP. The promoter-specificity pass is deviation D9 - its windows and gene sets were declared before the tracks were reopened, the pass itself was added mid-run.
Evidence that argues against this (1)
- hyp-the-writer-reaches-the-kmt2a-anchor-only-through-ctcf-and-only-after-the-break PREDICTS the anchor absence observed here. Both SUV39H1 and SETDB1 are recruited to double-strand breaks transiently and released on ATM-mediated KAP1-S824 phosphorylation, and NO measurement in this corpus has a damage arm. So the anchor negative is a resting-state negative, and the two hypotheses make the same prediction for every observation in this evidence item. source
- E2strong confidence 4 of 5: Replicated in peer-reviewed work by more than one group.dataset
Every H3K9-directed intervention in this corpus is argued as an effect on breakpoint stability: the founding mechanism's protective arm is G9a depletion or dual G9a/GLP inhibition with UNC0642 preventing KMT2A copy gain and rearrangement, and drug-unc0642's in vivo result carries no pharmacodynamic measurement of H3K9 methylation at all.
mechanism-h3k9me1-2-ctcf-balance-gates-kmt2a-rearrangement, drug-unc0642 and risk-the-h3k9me3-exoneration-of-g9a-inhibition-is-epithelial-only · Q102-h3k9-rearrangement-brake and Q108-h3k9me3-at-the-bcr · oncofusion-knowledge-graph 2026What this evidence cannot show
The founding mechanism's chromatin measurements are all H3K9me1/me2 in RPE epithelium, and its rearrangement readout is cytogenetic. This hypothesis's occupancy evidence is H3K9me3-machinery occupancy in MCF-7 and K562. So the two bodies of evidence concern DIFFERENT MARKS in DIFFERENT CELLS, and the claim that the interventions 'aim 52 kb away' is an inference from where the enzymes sit in the cells where they have been located, not a measurement in the cells where the intervention was tested.
Evidence that argues against this (1)
- THE FOUNDING MECHANISM'S OWN GENETICS PUT G9a IN A CAUSAL ROLE AT THE LOCUS, AND THAT IS STRONGER EVIDENCE THAN OCCUPANCY. siG9a prevented the rearrangement event, siEHMT1 did not, and G9a overexpression alone caused it - in cells and in mice. A functional result of that shape outranks an occupancy negative measured in two unrelated cancer lines with no input control. If G9a is causal at this locus while sitting at the promoter, this hypothesis's therapeutic clause is wrong in an interesting way rather than right. source
- E3strong confidence 4 of 5: Replicated in peer-reviewed work by more than one group.dataset
Across 28 C1-passing tracks of eight antigens in one MCF-7 deposit, every protein antigen reads the whole KMT2A locus elevated (six-non-anchor-interval medians 49.79-72.37) against 15.41 for H3K9me3, and every protein track reads 87.55-99.91 at the KMT2A promoter with a panel median of 96.87 - so the promoter and locus elevations have a large shared component that no input track exists to subtract.
concept-q116-a-panel-of-many-antigens-in-one-cell-type-is-the-input-track-the-deposit-did-not-provide · Q116-h3k9-axis-at-the-locus · oncofusion-knowledge-graph 2026What this evidence cannot show
All eight antigens are H3K9-axis proteins, so a shared true biology at this locus would look identical. The panel controls for the pipeline and for the region's ChIP-ability, not for a shared complex. Copy number is also unexcluded at the required resolution: CCLE calls KMT2A copy-neutral in MCF-7 but the segment-level log2 ratio at 11q23 has never been retrieved by any beat.
Evidence that argues against this (1)
- If the shared component IS a shared complex, this hypothesis's central claim gets STRONGER, not weaker - a whole H3K9 module resident across the KMT2A locus with its peak at the promoter is a bigger finding than three proteins at one promoter. The panel baseline is therefore a two-sided uncertainty and not a deflating control, and reading it only as a deflator would be as wrong as ignoring it. source
the analysis that generates this hypothesis
relocates that mechanism s enzyme: G9a is at the KMT2A promoter and ORDINARY at the exon-11 anchor, so its protective arm would act on transcription rather than on breakpoint chromatin. Weakened by that mechanism s own causal genetics, which outrank an occupancy negative
moves that risk from the breakpoint to the promoter: G9a is in the top decile of active promoters at KMT2A and ordinary at the anchor
if the enzyme is at the promoter, this compound s proximal effect at KMT2A is on transcription - and its in vivo result already carries no pharmacodynamic measurement of any kind
that hypothesis PREDICTS the anchor absence this one is built on; the two make the same prediction for every observation here and only a damage arm separates them
predictions 1, 2 and 4 in one design
- related to →KMT2A / MLL1 — the gene that breaks
the H3K9 module s address at this gene is its promoter, not its breakpoint cluster region
that hypothesis asked which writer deposits the mark at the anchor; this one answers that no writer is resident at the anchor and names the promoter as where they all are