Guest Editors: Geoffrey Faulkner and Uwe Ohler
Our understanding of gene regulatory elements and their function is being transformed by new molecular and computational approaches that provide insights into the 3D structure and chromatin environment involved in enhancer-promoter interactions and their functions. Even further, the availability of datasets from the ENCODE consortium and others have made it easier to uncover new biological findings attributed to these elements. Other avenues of research are exploring the impact of variation on regulatory function and the evolution of regulatory elements. Genome Biology highlights these advances in the understanding of gene regulatory elements with a special issue showcasing important work in this area.