Genome-wide Analysis of the Transcription Factor Binding Preference of Human Bidirectional Promoters and Functional Annotation of the Related Gene Pairs

Bidirectional gene pairs have received considerable attention for their prevalence in vertebrate genomes. However, their biological relevance and exact regulatory mechanism remain less understood. To study the inner properties of this gene organization and the difference between bi- and unidirectional genes, we conducted a genome-wide investigation in terms of the promoter sequence analysis, functional association and regulation motif discovery. 1210 bidirectional gene pairs were identified based on the GRCh37 human genome assembly data. CpG islands were detected in 98.42% bidirectional promoters by intergenetic: promoter analysis. Functional enrichment analysis revealed that bidirectional genes tend to be associated with housekeeping functions in metabolism pathways and nuclear processes, and pair members tend to be involved in the same biological function. Furthermore, a distinct collection of putative transcription factor binding sites that preferentially occurs in bi-directional promoters were determined by overrepresentation analysis.