To date, ENCODE has sampled 119 of 1,800 known TFs and general components of the transcriptional machinery on a limited number of cell types and 13 of more than 60 currently known histone or DNA modifications across 147 cell types. DNaseI, FAIRE and extensive RNA assays across subcellular fractionations have been undertaken on many cell types, but overall these data reflect a minor fraction of the potential functional information encoded in the human genome. An important future goal will be to enlarge this dataset to additional factors, modifications and cell types, complementing the other related projects in this area (e.g., Roadmap Epigenomics Project, http://www.roadmapepigenomics.org/ and International Human Epigenome Consortium, http://www.ihec-epigenomes.org/). These projects will constitute foundational resources for human genomics, allowing a deeper interpretation of the organization of gene and regulatory information and the mechanisms of regulation and thereby provide important insights in human health and disease.
