Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (
HNSCC) is one of the most common
cancers in the world, but its epigenomic features have not been determined. Here, we studied the
chromatin landscape of active enhancers of
HNSCC head
tumor tissues by performing H3K27ac and H3K4me1 ChIP-Seq with a
Tgfbr1/Pten double conditional knockout
HNSCC mouse model. We identified 1,248 gain variant enhancer loci (VELs) and 2,188 lost VELs, as well as 153 gain variant super enhancer loci (VSELs) and 234 lost VSELs. Potentially involved
transcription factors were predicted with motif analysis, and we identified
AP-1 as one of the critical oncogenic
transcription factors in
HNSCC and many other types of
cancer. Combining transcriptomic and epigenomic data, our analysis also showed that
AP-1 and histone modifications coordinately regulate target gene expression in
HNSCC. In conclusion, our study provides important epigenomic information for enhancer studies in
HNSCC and reveals new mechanism for
AP-1 regulating
HNSCC.