TAD conservation in vertebrate genomes is driven by stabilising selection

Topologically associating domains (TADs) are fundamental structural and gene regulatory components of chromatin defined by regions of high intra-domain contact frequency. Though TADs are found across diverse metazoans, the extent of their evolutionary conservation is still debated.

Here, we investigated the evolutionary conservation of TADs by analysing Hi-C data from 12 vertebrate species. We examined TAD numbers, borders, and gene positioning within TADs. We found that TAD features are all highly conserved across species, but decrease with evolutionary distance. Nevertheless, modelling TAD evolution using Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) process revealed strong stabilising selection signatures for TAD number within the majority of syntenic blocks. These syntenic blocks under selection were enriched for highly conserved noncoding elements associated with developmental gene regulation (genomic regulatory blocks). However, strong signatures for stabilising selection for TAD numbers were also found independent of genomic regulatory blocks or genes with non-developmental functions.

These findings improve our understanding of TAD conservation and highlight stabilising selection as an important driver in 3D genome evolution. Although selection on TAD structures is pronounced for developmental genes, our findings highlight the importance of TADs in genome and organismal functions beyond developmental biology.