# Effective gene expression prediction from sequence by integrating long-range interactions

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-avsec-z-nat-methods/  
OnCo record `paper-avsec-z-nat-methods` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Paper cited by one technology page, indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 34608324 and published in Nature methods; the citing page links this DOI, which is how the record was matched.

## Summary

How noncoding DNA determines gene expression in different cell types is a major unsolved problem, and critical downstream applications in human genetics depend on improved solutions. Here, we report substantially improved gene expression prediction accuracy from DNA sequences through the use of a deep learning architecture, called Enformer, that is able to integrate information from long-range interactions (up to 100 kb away) in the genome. This improvement yielded more accurate variant effect predictions on gene expression for both natural genetic variants and saturation mutagenesis measured by massively parallel reporter assays. Furthermore, Enformer learned to predict enhancer-promoter interactions directly from the DNA sequence competitively with methods that take direct experimental data as input. We expect that these advances will enable more effective fine-mapping of human disease associations and provide a framework to interpret cis-regulatory evolution.

Indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 34608324 (DOI 10.1038/s41592-021-01252-x). Matched by DOI alone: one technology page cites this DOI among its external links (the pages are listed under Related), and this page was written so that the citation resolves inside OnCo. No figure has been checked by an editor.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-09-22
- Tags: europepmc-ingest
- Journal: Nature methods
- Year: 2021
- DOI: 10.1038/s41592-021-01252-x
- Authors: Avsec Ž, Agarwal V, Visentin D, et al.
- What it means: One technology page on OnCo cites this paper by its DOI; this record gives the citation a page of its own so a reader can follow it without leaving OnCo. Read the abstract above alongside the citing page listed under Related; the record was created automatically from the Europe PMC entry and its figures have not been checked by hand.
- Caveats: Matched to the citing OnCo records by DOI alone; the summary reproduces the Europe PMC abstract and no figure has been verified against the full paper.

## Sources

- Nat Methods 2021: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-021-01252-x
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34608324/
- Europe PMC: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/34608324

## Connected records

- technologies: [Enformer and Borzoi (DeepMind, Calico)](https://onco.cc/technologies/enformer-borzoi/)

---
JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/paper-avsec-z-nat-methods.json