Clinical significance of spatiotemporal transcriptional bursting and control

The rapid development of technologies provides the potential to perform real-time visualization of transcriptional bursting patterns, superenhancer formation and sensitivity to perturbation, and interactions between enhancers, promoters, and regulators during the burst. The transcriptional bursting-induced fluctuation can modify cell capacities, cell-cell communications, cell responses to microenvironmental changes, and forms of cell death. A large number of clinical and translational studies describe the existence of heterogeneity among cells, tissues, and organs but mechanism-based understanding of how and why the heterogeneity exists and how it is formed. The transcriptional bursting, fluctuation, and control determine the development of heterogeneity and optimize cell functions in the cell development and differentiation, contribute to the initiation of cell dysfunction and tumorigenesis in response to environments, and development/evolvement of hyper/hyposensitivity to drugs. Spatiotemporal monitoring of transcriptional bursting and control provides a new insight and deeper understanding of spatiotemporal molecular medicine by integrating the transcriptional positioning and function with cell phenotypes, cell-cell communication, and clinical phenomes.