BACKGROUND
the expression of most genes varies between different cell and tissue types and between different development and physiological states.
some genes, however, are constitutively expressed in all tissues and their expression levels are comparatively constant across different cell types.
these genes have been referred to as housekeeping genes  and are hypothesized to constitute a small set of genes required to maintain minimum basic cellular function  <cit> .
in contrast to the expression pattern of hkgs, tissue enriched genes  are highly expressed in one particular tissue type and are either not expressed or are expressed at much lower levels in other tissues.
tegs are generally responsible for the specialized functions of the particular tissues or cell types in which they are expressed and can therefore serve as biomarkers of specific biological processes or tissues.
since many diseases involve tissue- or organ-specific processes, tegs may also be good candidate drug targets.
hkgs, in contrast, have been widely used as experimental controls and normalization references for gene transcription and expression experiments, including rt-pcr, qpcr, western blotting and microarray studies.
the expression of many of the genes currently used for such purposes, however, varies across different cell types and conditions, and consequently there is a need for a better set of hkgs that have stable, high expression levels across a large number of tissues.
the genomic organization of hkgs is comparatively compact: intronic regions, coding regions and the intergenic spaces are shorter for hkgs than for other genes  <cit> , and hkgs are strongly clustered in the human genome  <cit> , suggesting selection for economy in transcription and translation  <cit>  and genomic co-regulation of broadly expressed genes.
hkgs, as a result of their critical role in basic cell maintenance, are subject to stronger purifying selection and therefore evolve more slowly than tegs in terms of sequence mutation  <cit> .
it is less well understood to what extent the functions and expression patterns of hkgs are conserved across species, whether hkgs are conserved at the genomic structure level and how polymorphic hkgs and tegs are among different individuals within a species.
to address these questions, we sought to define a high quality set of hkgs and then analyze the conservation of hkgs in terms of functions and expression patterns.
we also analyzed the distribution of genomic component, such as segmental duplication, copy number variation regions and ultra conserved elements, which are closely related to conservation.
the regulatory mechanisms underlying the differential expression patterns of hkgs compared to tegs are also poorly characterized.
chromatin structure and epigenetic modifications of genomic structure have been documented to regulate gene expression and affect replication, recombination and dna repair  <cit>  through various mechanisms including nucleosome positioning and occupancy, histone modification  and dna cytosine methylation  <cit> .
abnormal changes in chromatin structure have been linked to disease, particularly cancer  <cit> .
investigation of the differences in chromatin structure and epigenetic modification between hkgs and tegs, consequently, may provide insight into epigenetic contributions to transcriptional patterns and the mechanisms of gene regulation and disease.
here we use microarray gene expression profiling and analysis to compile a set of  <dig>  high quality hkgs that are highly expressed in  <dig> normal tissues and show minimal fluctuations in expression level across these tissues.
similarly, we describe the identification of  <dig> tegs.
these genes from both categories are potentially useful laboratory experimental controls.
the distinct expression patterns of hkgs and tegs and the high quality of these sets also provide an opportunity to enhance our understanding of transcriptional and epigenetic regulatory mechanisms.
we compare and contrast the genomic and epigenetic properties of hkgs and tegs, and identify epigenetic factors that may contribute to the underlying mechanisms of expression regulation differences between hkgs and tegs.
RESULTS
hkgs and tegs
we identified  <dig>  hkgs from a total of  <dig>  genes in  <dig> normal human tissues monitored on the microarray .
this list of hkgs was used for analysis of genomic and epigenetic features .
we also identified  <dig> tegs from a subset of  <dig> representative tissues.
these tegs are expressed at much higher level in one single tissue than any other tissues .
tegs were found in  <dig> tissues, while no tegs meeting our criteria were identified in spleen, colon and cd4+ t-cells.
the  <dig> hkgs with the highest and most consistent expression  were selected from this list as the best candidates to serve as reference hkgs in laboratory experiments .
three of the  <dig> highest quality hkgs, gapdh, actb and ubc, are commonly used hkgs for experimental controls.
expression data for several other commonly used or commercially available hkgs  not included in the top  <dig> hkg lists  illustrate that genes commonly used as controls do not necessarily show high expression with low variance across diverse tissues, and in fact, the expression of some of these genes varies by more than an order of magnitude across tissues.
there have been other recent efforts to identify hkgs in human tissues to serve as experimental references or internal controls  <cit> , but these studies have significant shortcomings.
one study surveyed a much smaller set of  <dig> potential candidate genes  <cit> , while another one used a much smaller set of  <dig> tissues  <cit> .
others were based on microarray data from heterogeneous sources lacking systematic experimental controls  <cit>  or were based on in silico predictions  <cit> .
the hkgs identified here are based on high quality microarray expression data systematically gathered from a large and diverse set of tissues.
this is a systematically and experimentally defined set of hkg which have both high expression and low fluctuation across all major organ/tissues.
the human and mouse transcriptome in multiple tissues have been surveyed in microarray studies  <cit>  that built foundations for studies on housekeeping and tissue-specific genes  <cit> .
large collections of est and sage data have also been used to identify hkg  <cit>  and tissue-specific genes  <cit> .
comparing hkgs of this study and other studies based on microarray  <cit>  or est datasets  <cit> , significant portions of genes in the three hkg sets overlap, while the hkg list described here has the fewest genes unique in a single study, suggesting our fluctuation-controlled microarray approach is more conservative than the other methods that either depend on sampling or representation in an est dataset  <cit>  or lack control of variation across different tissues  <cit>  .
we also compared our tegs in testis, prostate, liver and skin with tissue-specific genes from another study  <cit>  .
a significant portion of our tegs overlap with this human tissue-specific gene study, particularly for liver, in which 70% of the defined tegs are identical.
other tissues are more discrepant, as a result of different tissue selection for the surveys and different criteria used to identify these genes.
we next investigated the functions of hkgs by testing for enrichment of panther biological process annotations  <cit> .
as expected, hkgs are enriched for biological processes related to basic maintenance of the cell, including protein biosynthesis, pre-mrna processing, cell cycle and intracellular protein trafficking .
in contrast, tegs were observed to be enriched largely for tissue-specific biological processes, as expected .
for instance, tegs of bone marrow, brain, kidney, liver and skeletal muscle are enriched in immunity and defense, synaptic transmission, ion transport, lipid metabolism and muscle contraction, respectively.
these biological processes are presumably less likely to be essential for cell maintenance and survival.
conservation of functions and expression patterns in hkgs across species
the enriched biological processes observed for hkgs suggest that a minimum set of functions are required for cells to survive, but it is not obvious to what extent these functions and genes will be conserved across other mammalian and eukaryotic species.
to address this question, we used the number of orthologs of human genes in other eukaryotic species as identified by ncbi homologene  <cit>  as an indication of functional conservation across species .
in general, fewer orthologs can be identified as the evolutionary distance between human and the target species increases.
human hkgs, however, are significantly more likely to have orthologs in other species relative to other genes , while tegs are less likely to have orthologs .
this difference is particularly striking in invertebrates, where the ratios between the fraction of hkgs and tegs with orthologs in fly, worm or yeast are  <dig>  ,  <dig>   and  <dig>  , respectively.
this analysis suggests that human hkg functions, mostly involving gene expression, are functionally conserved in model organisms such as worm and yeast, while many human teg-related functions were acquired after the divergence between humans and lower organisms.
the ratio indicates the fraction of human genes with orthologs in other species.
<dig>   <dig> and  <dig>  of total hkgs, tegs and all genes on the array, respectively, are represented in homologene and these numbers were used to calculate the ratio of orthologs.
hkgs were identified in this study on the basis of their observed expression in human tissues.
to determine if this expression pattern is conserved across species, we examined the expression of human hkgs orthologs in mouse, rat, and dog gene expression profiling data sets  for these species .
relative to orthologs for all genes on the microarray, hkg orthologs are more likely to remain highly expressed with small variations in other mammalian species.
the average intensity level and cv  of the hkg orthologs are both comparable to their counterparts in human, suggesting that the expression pattern of hkgs is conserved among mammalian species and those hkgs in human are likely to be hkgs in other mammals.
this finding is also supported by a recent study in which universally expressed genes across tissues were found generally more ancient in origin compared with specifically expressed genes  <cit> .
distribution of segmental duplication, copy number variation sites and ultraconserved elements in hkgs and tegs
it is estimated more than 5% of the human genome is composed of segmental duplications , duplicated genomic blocks ranging from  <dig> kb to over  <dig> kb  <cit> .
to test if the high expression of hkgs is related to higher copy numbers in the genome, we calculated the distribution of sds  <cit>  and copy number variations   <cit>  in hkgs and tegs .
to our surprise, sds are not enriched in hkgs, but are enriched two-fold in tegs relative to refseq genes.
generally, the copy numbers of genes are positively correlated with gene expression  <cit> .
our results clearly show that the high expression level of hkgs does not rely on the redundancy of gene copies.
cnv sites are only slightly enriched in hkgs, but are strongly enriched in tegs.
the increased polymorphism of tegs is concordant with their weaker selection constraints than hkgs, and probably resulted in by the enriched sds which are predisposed to non-allelic homologous recombination, chromosomal rearrangement and copy number variations  <cit> .
we also calculated the distribution of ultra conserved elements  which are sequences that are absolutely conserved  between orthologous regions of the human, rat, and mouse genomes  <cit> .
consistent with the slower evolution of hkgs, uces are significantly enriched in hkgs and not changed in teg .
hkgs have been found to evolve more slowly than tegs at the sequence level point mutation  <cit> .
the distribution of sd, cnv and uce demonstrated that hkgs are also more conserved than tegs with respect to genomic structural changes.
enriched cpg islands at hkg transcription start sites
it has long been known that hkgs are associated with cpg islands  <cit> .
recently it was found that the lack of cpg islands around the transcription start site is associated with a higher degree of tissue specificity  <cit> .
these studies, however, lacked a systematic representation of hkgs or tegs, either testing only a limited number of experimentally confirmed hkgs or relying on the redundancy of ests as an indirect indicator of hkgs.
we compared the cpg island distribution   <dig> bp around transcription start sites  and end sites in hkgs and tegs using the systematic hkg and teg gene lists assembled here .
both the fraction of genes containing cpg islands and the density of cpg islands at tss are correlated with the expression patterns with tegs being depleted for cpg islands and hkgs showing enrichment of cpg islands relative to refseq genes in general.
a recent est based study showed hkgs primarily use cpg-dependant core promoters  <cit> .
however, our report is a systematic and quantitative demonstration of enrichment of cpg islands at hkg tss and depletion at teg tss.
we also observed that at transcription end sites, the occurrence of cpg islands significantly decreases for all groups of genes, and both hkgs and tegs show a slight depletion of cpg islands .
despite the fact that the sequence of hkgs is generally more conserved than other genes, another analysis showed that hkgs tend to have reduced upstream sequence conservation particularly within cpg rich genes  <cit> .
enrichment of cpg islands in the tss of hkgs may play a role in this reduced upstream conservation.
chromatin structure and epigenetic modifications in hkgs
we next examined differences in chromatin structure and epigenetic modifications, including nucleosome occupancy, histone modifications, and dna methylation between hkg and tegs as possible mechanisms contributing to the differential expression patterns of these two groups of genes.
dnase i hypersensitive  sites, formed by nucleosome-free chromatin regions, have been used to identify locations of many different types of regulatory regions including enhancers, silencers, promoters, insulators, and locus control regions  <cit> .
figure 3a shows the distribution of hs sites in cd4+ t cells  <cit>  at tss for hkgs, tegs and refseq genes.
the density of hs sites peaks at tss, as expected, and rapidly drops to background levels beyond  <dig> kb from tss.
hkgs show an elevated density of hs sites relative to refseq genes, indicating that tss of hkgs are less likely to be packaged into nucleosomes and are more exposed to transcription and regulatory factors.
hs site density in tegs is low, consistent with the low levels of expression of these genes in cd4+ t cells, the cell type from which the hs sites data were generated.
the hkgs identified in this study are highly expressed in cd4+ t cells , leading to the possibility that the differences observed in hs site density seen for hkgs and tegs may reflect only the overall expression level of these genes in cd4+ t cells, rather than the difference in expression patterns across tissues.
to address this question, we partitioned both the hkgs and refseq genes into subgroups based on their expression level in cd4+ t cells: low, intermediate and high .
while a correlation between hs site density and expression level is still observed across the subgroups for either hkgs or refseq genes, the hkg-low expression subgroup  has a higher hs site density than the refseq-high expression subgroup , clearly demonstrating that the hs site density is not simply a function of gene expression level in cd4+ t cells, but also correlates with the high levels of expression across different tissues.
a recent study showed the positive association of cpg density with the distribution of hs sites across different tissues  <cit> , suggesting that the increase in hs sites in hkgs may be related to high cpg density.
another possible explanation for this observation is that hkgs may contain sequence elements at their tss that inhibit formation of nucleosomes, leading to high promoter accessibility and higher expression levels of these genes across different tissues.
further investigation of tss sequences and more hs site mapping in other tissues would be necessary to test this hypothesis.
histone acetylation regulates gene expression by allowing transcription factors access to promoters in the chromatin by neutralizing the positive charge of histone tails and weakening their contact with negatively charged dna  <cit> .
using histone acetylation data of chromosome  <dig> and  <dig> derived from liver hep g <dig> cells <cit> , we show that the acetylation ratio of genes peaks at the tss .
the histone acetylation density observed for hkgs is higher than refseq genes on average, while the density observed for tegs, which are not expressed in liver hep g <dig> cells, is almost at the background level .
this observation is consistent with recent genome-wide studies in which histone acetylation is positively correlated with transcription factor binding or gene expression  <cit> .
to study the correlation of gene expression with histone acetylation, hkgs and refseq genes were partitioned into subgroups based on their expression level in hep g <dig> cells.
74% of all refseq genes have low expression  in the hep g <dig> cells and the higher levels of histone acetylation levels for hkgs relative to refseq genes was maintained.
the difference in histone acetylation between refseq genes and hkgs with medium  and high  expression levels, however, virtually disappears.
it appears that histone acetylation density depends only on gene expression level, indicating that histone acetylation of tss does not contribute to the expression pattern of hkgs across tissues .
interestingly, while histone acetylation density is low for genes with low expression levels, it is essentially identical for all subgroups with expression intensity > <dig>  this observation of a threshold-like relationship suggests that histone acetylation of tss may be a necessary condition for gene expression and may serve as a "transcriptional switch" that opens the chromatin structure and allows other transcription factors to regulate gene expression.
significant differences between hkgs and tegs in both nucleosome occupancy and histone acetylation suggest that the regulation of gene expression for these different groups is affected by multiple epigenetic factors.
we also compared the transcription factor binding and histone methylation density between hkgs and tegs using data collected in cd4+ t cells  <cit>  .
as expected, binding of the transcription factor pol ii and regulatory factor ctcf reaches a peak level at the exact position of tss.
ctcf is a zinc finger protein with diverse regulatory functions, including a role in mediating chromatin interactions to form the genomic three-dimensional structure <cit> .
recent studies on hkg clusters around the α-globin and β-globin loci suggest chromatin loop/hub forms during the transcription of the gene clusters  <cit> .
our results suggest ctcf plays a role in hkg transcription.
transcription factor binding is highest for hkgs among all gene groups, while transcription factor binding of tegs, which are not expressed in cd4+ t cells, is near background levels .
the patterns observed for different histone methylation sites of hkgs and tegs are complex, likely reflecting the complex relationship between histone methylation and transcription .
differences in the shape of the distribution are observed between hkgs, tegs and refseq genes for some histone methylations.
when similar distribution shapes are observed, histone methylations may be either positively or negatively correlated with the expression level.
these features suggest that histone methylation likely contributes to the differential gene expression patterns of these genes in a complex fashion.
dna methylation in mammals occurs on cytosine residues of cpg dinucleotides, which may lead to formation of heterochromatin, imprinting and transcriptional repression  <cit> .
the distribution of genome-wide dna methylation  <cit>  in hkgs, refseq genes and tegs  shows that dna methylation peaks at tss for all gene groups and that there is no significant difference of dna methylation levels between hkgs, tegs and refseq genes in either sperm cells or fibroblast cells.
additionally, comparison of the list of methylated genes from another recent study  <cit>  with our hkgs and tegs did not yield any significant overlapping genes .
based on these two pieces of evidence, hkgs do not appear to be enriched for dna methylation, despite enrichment for cpg islands.
this observation is consistent with previous reports that cpg islands in normal tissues are protected from methylation and that methylation of cpg islands is one of the mechanisms of tumorigenesis  <cit> .
CONCLUSIONS
using high quality microarray gene expression profiling data, we identified a small subset of housekeeping genes that are highly expressed in  <dig> diverse normal tissues with small variation in expression level across these tissues.
cross species studies indicate that the functions and expression patterns of these hkgs are conserved between different species.
these features make these genes better candidates for experimental references of transcription and expression levels than currently commonly used housekeeping genes: they can be easily detected, are stable across different tissues and are likely to be hkgs in other species.
to investigate the mechanisms behind transcriptional regulation of hkgs and tegs, we compared genomic features, chromatin structure, and epigenetic modifications between a larger set of hkgs and tegs.
we find that cpg islands are enriched near the tsss of hkgs, in line with previous studies.
hkgs have lower nucleosome occupancy, as indicated by strong enrichment of dnase i hypersensitive sites in hkgs that cannot be fully explained by the high expression level of hkgs in a single tissue type .
hkgs are enriched for dnase i hypersensitive sites relative to refseq genes of comparable or higher expression levels.
hkgs and tegs show significant differences in various histone methylation patterns, suggesting that histone methylation likely plays a role in the differential expression patterns but the relationships between histone methylation patterns and expression patterns is complex.
dna methylation patterns, in contrast, are similar for both hkgs and tegs, suggesting that dna methylation does not play a significant role in the differential expression patterns of these different types of genes.
elevated histone acetylation is not seen for hkgs after the correlation with expression is accounted for.
interestingly, however, histone acetylation appears to be elevated in all genes with moderate to high expression levels, suggesting that histone acetylation may serve as a general transcriptional switch to open chromatin and provide access to other transcription factors, which then regulate the extent of expression.

 the expression of most genes varies between different cell and tissue types and between different development and physiological states. some genes, however, are constitutively expressed in all tissues and their expression levels are comparatively constant across different cell types. these genes have been referred to as housekeeping genes and are hypothesized to constitute a small set of genes required to maintain minimum basic cellular function. in contrast to the expression pattern of hkgs, tissue enriched genes are highly expressed in one particular tissue type and are either not expressed or are expressed at much lower levels in other tissues. tegs are generally responsible for the specialized functions of the particular tissues or cell types in which they are expressed and can therefore serve as biomarkers of specific biological processes or tissues. since many diseases involve tissue- or organ-specific processes, tegs may also be good candidate drug targets. hkgs, in contrast, have been widely used as experimental controls and normalization references for gene transcription and expression experiments, including rt-pcr, qpcr, western blotting and microarray studies. the expression of many of the genes currently used for such purposes, however, varies across different cell types and conditions, and consequently there is a need for a better set of hkgs that have stable, high expression levels across a large number of tissues. the genomic organization of hkgs is comparatively compact: intronic regions, coding regions and the intergenic spaces are shorter for hkgs than for other genes, and hkgs are strongly clustered in the human genome, suggesting selection for economy in transcription and translation and genomic co-regulation of broadly expressed genes. hkgs, as a result of their critical role in basic cell maintenance, are subject to stronger purifying selection and therefore evolve more slowly than tegs in terms of sequence mutation. it is less well understood to what extent the functions and expression patterns of hkgs are conserved across species, whether hkgs are conserved at the genomic structure level and how polymorphic hkgs and tegs are among different individuals within a species. to address these questions, we sought to define a high quality set of hkgs and then analyze the conservation of hkgs in terms of functions and expression patterns. we also analyzed the distribution of genomic component, such as segmental duplication, copy number variation regions and ultra conserved elements, which are closely related to conservation. the regulatory mechanisms underlying the differential expression patterns of hkgs compared to tegs are also poorly characterized. chromatin structure and epigenetic modifications of genomic structure have been documented to regulate gene expression and affect replication, recombination and dna repair through various mechanisms including nucleosome positioning and occupancy, histone modification and dna cytosine methylation. abnormal changes in chromatin structure have been linked to disease, particularly cancer. investigation of the differences in chromatin structure and epigenetic modification between hkgs and tegs, consequently, may provide insight into epigenetic contributions to transcriptional patterns and the mechanisms of gene regulation and disease. here we use microarray gene expression profiling and analysis to compile a set of high quality hkgs that are highly expressed in normal tissues and show minimal fluctuations in expression level across these tissues. similarly, we describe the identification of tegs. these genes from both categories are potentially useful laboratory experimental controls. the distinct expression patterns of hkgs and tegs and the high quality of these sets also provide an opportunity to enhance our understanding of transcriptional and epigenetic regulatory mechanisms. we compare and contrast the genomic and epigenetic properties of hkgs and tegs, and identify epigenetic factors that may contribute to the underlying mechanisms of expression regulation differences between hkgs and tegs.  hkgs and tegs we identified hkgs from a total of genes in normal human tissues monitored on the microarray. this list of hkgs was used for analysis of genomic and epigenetic features. we also identified tegs from a subset of representative tissues. these tegs are expressed at much higher level in one single tissue than any other tissues. tegs were found in tissues, while no tegs meeting our criteria were identified in spleen, colon and cd4+ t-cells. the hkgs with the highest and most consistent expression were selected from this list as the best candidates to serve as reference hkgs in laboratory experiments. three of the highest quality hkgs, gapdh, actb and ubc, are commonly used hkgs for experimental controls. expression data for several other commonly used or commercially available hkgs not included in the top hkg lists illustrate that genes commonly used as controls do not necessarily show high expression with low variance across diverse tissues, and in fact, the expression of some of these genes varies by more than an order of magnitude across tissues. there have been other recent efforts to identify hkgs in human tissues to serve as experimental references or internal controls, but these studies have significant shortcomings. one study surveyed a much smaller set of potential candidate genes, while another one used a much smaller set of tissues. others were based on microarray data from heterogeneous sources lacking systematic experimental controls or were based on in silico predictions. the hkgs identified here are based on high quality microarray expression data systematically gathered from a large and diverse set of tissues. this is a systematically and experimentally defined set of hkg which have both high expression and low fluctuation across all major organ/tissues. the human and mouse transcriptome in multiple tissues have been surveyed in microarray studies that built foundations for studies on housekeeping and tissue-specific genes. large collections of est and sage data have also been used to identify hkg and tissue-specific genes. comparing hkgs of this study and other studies based on microarray or est datasets, significant portions of genes in the three hkg sets overlap, while the hkg list described here has the fewest genes unique in a single study, suggesting our fluctuation-controlled microarray approach is more conservative than the other methods that either depend on sampling or representation in an est dataset or lack control of variation across different tissues. we also compared our tegs in testis, prostate, liver and skin with tissue-specific genes from another study. a significant portion of our tegs overlap with this human tissue-specific gene study, particularly for liver, in which 70% of the defined tegs are identical. other tissues are more discrepant, as a result of different tissue selection for the surveys and different criteria used to identify these genes. we next investigated the functions of hkgs by testing for enrichment of panther biological process annotations. as expected, hkgs are enriched for biological processes related to basic maintenance of the cell, including protein biosynthesis, pre-mrna processing, cell cycle and intracellular protein trafficking. in contrast, tegs were observed to be enriched largely for tissue-specific biological processes, as expected. for instance, tegs of bone marrow, brain, kidney, liver and skeletal muscle are enriched in immunity and defense, synaptic transmission, ion transport, lipid metabolism and muscle contraction, respectively. these biological processes are presumably less likely to be essential for cell maintenance and survival. conservation of functions and expression patterns in hkgs across species the enriched biological processes observed for hkgs suggest that a minimum set of functions are required for cells to survive, but it is not obvious to what extent these functions and genes will be conserved across other mammalian and eukaryotic species. to address this question, we used the number of orthologs of human genes in other eukaryotic species as identified by ncbi homologene as an indication of functional conservation across species. in general, fewer orthologs can be identified as the evolutionary distance between human and the target species increases. human hkgs, however, are significantly more likely to have orthologs in other species relative to other genes, while tegs are less likely to have orthologs. this difference is particularly striking in invertebrates, where the ratios between the fraction of hkgs and tegs with orthologs in fly, worm or yeast are, and, respectively. this analysis suggests that human hkg functions, mostly involving gene expression, are functionally conserved in model organisms such as worm and yeast, while many human teg-related functions were acquired after the divergence between humans and lower organisms. the ratio indicates the fraction of human genes with orthologs in other species. and of total hkgs, tegs and all genes on the array, respectively, are represented in homologene and these numbers were used to calculate the ratio of orthologs. hkgs were identified in this study on the basis of their observed expression in human tissues. to determine if this expression pattern is conserved across species, we examined the expression of human hkgs orthologs in mouse, rat, and dog gene expression profiling data sets for these species. relative to orthologs for all genes on the microarray, hkg orthologs are more likely to remain highly expressed with small variations in other mammalian species. the average intensity level and cv of the hkg orthologs are both comparable to their counterparts in human, suggesting that the expression pattern of hkgs is conserved among mammalian species and those hkgs in human are likely to be hkgs in other mammals. this finding is also supported by a recent study in which universally expressed genes across tissues were found generally more ancient in origin compared with specifically expressed genes. distribution of segmental duplication, copy number variation sites and ultraconserved elements in hkgs and tegs it is estimated more than 5% of the human genome is composed of segmental duplications, duplicated genomic blocks ranging from kb to over kb. to test if the high expression of hkgs is related to higher copy numbers in the genome, we calculated the distribution of sds and copy number variations in hkgs and tegs. to our surprise, sds are not enriched in hkgs, but are enriched two-fold in tegs relative to refseq genes. generally, the copy numbers of genes are positively correlated with gene expression. our results clearly show that the high expression level of hkgs does not rely on the redundancy of gene copies. cnv sites are only slightly enriched in hkgs, but are strongly enriched in tegs. the increased polymorphism of tegs is concordant with their weaker selection constraints than hkgs, and probably resulted in by the enriched sds which are predisposed to non-allelic homologous recombination, chromosomal rearrangement and copy number variations. we also calculated the distribution of ultra conserved elements which are sequences that are absolutely conserved between orthologous regions of the human, rat, and mouse genomes. consistent with the slower evolution of hkgs, uces are significantly enriched in hkgs and not changed in teg. hkgs have been found to evolve more slowly than tegs at the sequence level point mutation. the distribution of sd, cnv and uce demonstrated that hkgs are also more conserved than tegs with respect to genomic structural changes. enriched cpg islands at hkg transcription start sites it has long been known that hkgs are associated with cpg islands. recently it was found that the lack of cpg islands around the transcription start site is associated with a higher degree of tissue specificity. these studies, however, lacked a systematic representation of hkgs or tegs, either testing only a limited number of experimentally confirmed hkgs or relying on the redundancy of ests as an indirect indicator of hkgs. we compared the cpg island distribution bp around transcription start sites and end sites in hkgs and tegs using the systematic hkg and teg gene lists assembled here. both the fraction of genes containing cpg islands and the density of cpg islands at tss are correlated with the expression patterns with tegs being depleted for cpg islands and hkgs showing enrichment of cpg islands relative to refseq genes in general. a recent est based study showed hkgs primarily use cpg-dependant core promoters. however, our report is a systematic and quantitative demonstration of enrichment of cpg islands at hkg tss and depletion at teg tss. we also observed that at transcription end sites, the occurrence of cpg islands significantly decreases for all groups of genes, and both hkgs and tegs show a slight depletion of cpg islands. despite the fact that the sequence of hkgs is generally more conserved than other genes, another analysis showed that hkgs tend to have reduced upstream sequence conservation particularly within cpg rich genes. enrichment of cpg islands in the tss of hkgs may play a role in this reduced upstream conservation. chromatin structure and epigenetic modifications in hkgs we next examined differences in chromatin structure and epigenetic modifications, including nucleosome occupancy, histone modifications, and dna methylation between hkg and tegs as possible mechanisms contributing to the differential expression patterns of these two groups of genes. dnase i hypersensitive sites, formed by nucleosome-free chromatin regions, have been used to identify locations of many different types of regulatory regions including enhancers, silencers, promoters, insulators, and locus control regions. figure 3a shows the distribution of hs sites in cd4+ t cells at tss for hkgs, tegs and refseq genes. the density of hs sites peaks at tss, as expected, and rapidly drops to background levels beyond kb from tss. hkgs show an elevated density of hs sites relative to refseq genes, indicating that tss of hkgs are less likely to be packaged into nucleosomes and are more exposed to transcription and regulatory factors. hs site density in tegs is low, consistent with the low levels of expression of these genes in cd4+ t cells, the cell type from which the hs sites data were generated. the hkgs identified in this study are highly expressed in cd4+ t cells, leading to the possibility that the differences observed in hs site density seen for hkgs and tegs may reflect only the overall expression level of these genes in cd4+ t cells, rather than the difference in expression patterns across tissues. to address this question, we partitioned both the hkgs and refseq genes into subgroups based on their expression level in cd4+ t cells: low, intermediate and high. while a correlation between hs site density and expression level is still observed across the subgroups for either hkgs or refseq genes, the hkg-low expression subgroup has a higher hs site density than the refseq-high expression subgroup, clearly demonstrating that the hs site density is not simply a function of gene expression level in cd4+ t cells, but also correlates with the high levels of expression across different tissues. a recent study showed the positive association of cpg density with the distribution of hs sites across different tissues, suggesting that the increase in hs sites in hkgs may be related to high cpg density. another possible explanation for this observation is that hkgs may contain sequence elements at their tss that inhibit formation of nucleosomes, leading to high promoter accessibility and higher expression levels of these genes across different tissues. further investigation of tss sequences and more hs site mapping in other tissues would be necessary to test this hypothesis. histone acetylation regulates gene expression by allowing transcription factors access to promoters in the chromatin by neutralizing the positive charge of histone tails and weakening their contact with negatively charged dna. using histone acetylation data of chromosome and derived from liver hep g cells, we show that the acetylation ratio of genes peaks at the tss. the histone acetylation density observed for hkgs is higher than refseq genes on average, while the density observed for tegs, which are not expressed in liver hep g cells, is almost at the background level. this observation is consistent with recent genome-wide studies in which histone acetylation is positively correlated with transcription factor binding or gene expression. to study the correlation of gene expression with histone acetylation, hkgs and refseq genes were partitioned into subgroups based on their expression level in hep g cells. 74% of all refseq genes have low expression in the hep g cells and the higher levels of histone acetylation levels for hkgs relative to refseq genes was maintained. the difference in histone acetylation between refseq genes and hkgs with medium and high expression levels, however, virtually disappears. it appears that histone acetylation density depends only on gene expression level, indicating that histone acetylation of tss does not contribute to the expression pattern of hkgs across tissues. interestingly, while histone acetylation density is low for genes with low expression levels, it is essentially identical for all subgroups with expression intensity > this observation of a threshold-like relationship suggests that histone acetylation of tss may be a necessary condition for gene expression and may serve as a "transcriptional switch" that opens the chromatin structure and allows other transcription factors to regulate gene expression. significant differences between hkgs and tegs in both nucleosome occupancy and histone acetylation suggest that the regulation of gene expression for these different groups is affected by multiple epigenetic factors. we also compared the transcription factor binding and histone methylation density between hkgs and tegs using data collected in cd4+ t cells. as expected, binding of the transcription factor pol ii and regulatory factor ctcf reaches a peak level at the exact position of tss. ctcf is a zinc finger protein with diverse regulatory functions, including a role in mediating chromatin interactions to form the genomic three-dimensional structure. recent studies on hkg clusters around the α-globin and β-globin loci suggest chromatin loop/hub forms during the transcription of the gene clusters. our results suggest ctcf plays a role in hkg transcription. transcription factor binding is highest for hkgs among all gene groups, while transcription factor binding of tegs, which are not expressed in cd4+ t cells, is near background levels. the patterns observed for different histone methylation sites of hkgs and tegs are complex, likely reflecting the complex relationship between histone methylation and transcription. differences in the shape of the distribution are observed between hkgs, tegs and refseq genes for some histone methylations. when similar distribution shapes are observed, histone methylations may be either positively or negatively correlated with the expression level. these features suggest that histone methylation likely contributes to the differential gene expression patterns of these genes in a complex fashion. dna methylation in mammals occurs on cytosine residues of cpg dinucleotides, which may lead to formation of heterochromatin, imprinting and transcriptional repression. the distribution of genome-wide dna methylation in hkgs, refseq genes and tegs shows that dna methylation peaks at tss for all gene groups and that there is no significant difference of dna methylation levels between hkgs, tegs and refseq genes in either sperm cells or fibroblast cells. additionally, comparison of the list of methylated genes from another recent study with our hkgs and tegs did not yield any significant overlapping genes. based on these two pieces of evidence, hkgs do not appear to be enriched for dna methylation, despite enrichment for cpg islands. this observation is consistent with previous reports that cpg islands in normal tissues are protected from methylation and that methylation of cpg islands is one of the mechanisms of tumorigenesis.  using high quality microarray gene expression profiling data, we identified a small subset of housekeeping genes that are highly expressed in diverse normal tissues with small variation in expression level across these tissues. cross species studies indicate that the functions and expression patterns of these hkgs are conserved between different species. these features make these genes better candidates for experimental references of transcription and expression levels than currently commonly used housekeeping genes: they can be easily detected, are stable across different tissues and are likely to be hkgs in other species. to investigate the mechanisms behind transcriptional regulation of hkgs and tegs, we compared genomic features, chromatin structure, and epigenetic modifications between a larger set of hkgs and tegs. we find that cpg islands are enriched near the tsss of hkgs, in line with previous studies. hkgs have lower nucleosome occupancy, as indicated by strong enrichment of dnase i hypersensitive sites in hkgs that cannot be fully explained by the high expression level of hkgs in a single tissue type. hkgs are enriched for dnase i hypersensitive sites relative to refseq genes of comparable or higher expression levels. hkgs and tegs show significant differences in various histone methylation patterns, suggesting that histone methylation likely plays a role in the differential expression patterns but the relationships between histone methylation patterns and expression patterns is complex. dna methylation patterns, in contrast, are similar for both hkgs and tegs, suggesting that dna methylation does not play a significant role in the differential expression patterns of these different types of genes. elevated histone acetylation is not seen for hkgs after the correlation with expression is accounted for. interestingly, however, histone acetylation appears to be elevated in all genes with moderate to high expression levels, suggesting that histone acetylation may serve as a general transcriptional switch to open chromatin and provide access to other transcription factors, which then regulate the extent of expression. 
analysis of genomic and epigenetic features of hkgs and tegs reveals that the high expression of hkgs across different tissues is associated with decreased nucleosome occupancy at the transcription start site as indicated by enhanced dnase hypersensitivity. we have compiled a set of high quality hkgs that should provide higher and more consistent expression when used as references in laboratory experiments than currently used hkgs. cross-species comparison shows that both the functions and expression patterns of hkgs are conserved. histone methylation patterns differ significantly between hkgs and tegs, suggesting that methylation contributes to the differential expression patterns as well. in addition, our results identify chromatin structure and epigenetic features of hkgs and tegs that are likely to play an important role in regulating their strikingly different expression patterns. here, we generate gene expression profiles of normal human tissues on custom high-density microarrays to systematically identify hkgs and tegs and compile a small subset of housekeeping genes which are highly expressed in all tissues with lower variance than many commonly used hkgs. additionally, we systematically and quantitatively demonstrated that the cpg islands' enrichment in hkgs transcription start sites and their depletion in tegs tss. the comparison of genomic features between hkgs and tegs shows that hkgs are more conserved than tegs in terms of functions, expression pattern and polymorphisms. housekeeping genes are constitutively expressed in all tissues while tissue-enriched genes are expressed at a much higher level in a single tissue type than in others. tegs are enriched with respect to both segmental duplication and copy number variation, while no such enrichment is observed for hkgs, suggesting the high expression of hkgs are not due to high copy numbers.
 housekeeping genes are constitutively expressed in all tissues while tissue-enriched genes are expressed at a much higher level in a single tissue type than in others. hkgs serve as valuable experimental controls in gene and protein expression experiments, while tegs tend to represent distinct physiological processes and are frequently candidates for biomarkers or drug targets. the genomic features of these two groups of genes expressed in opposing patterns may shed light on the mechanisms by which cells maintain basic and tissue-specific functions.  here, we generate gene expression profiles of normal human tissues on custom high-density microarrays to systematically identify hkgs and tegs and compile a small subset of housekeeping genes which are highly expressed in all tissues with lower variance than many commonly used hkgs. cross-species comparison shows that both the functions and expression patterns of hkgs are conserved. tegs are enriched with respect to both segmental duplication and copy number variation, while no such enrichment is observed for hkgs, suggesting the high expression of hkgs are not due to high copy numbers. analysis of genomic and epigenetic features of hkgs and tegs reveals that the high expression of hkgs across different tissues is associated with decreased nucleosome occupancy at the transcription start site as indicated by enhanced dnase hypersensitivity. additionally, we systematically and quantitatively demonstrated that the cpg islands' enrichment in hkgs transcription start sites and their depletion in tegs tss. histone methylation patterns differ significantly between hkgs and tegs, suggesting that methylation contributes to the differential expression patterns as well.  we have compiled a set of high quality hkgs that should provide higher and more consistent expression when used as references in laboratory experiments than currently used hkgs. the comparison of genomic features between hkgs and tegs shows that hkgs are more conserved than tegs in terms of functions, expression pattern and polymorphisms. in addition, our results identify chromatin structure and epigenetic features of hkgs and tegs that are likely to play an important role in regulating their strikingly different expression patterns. 