Editorial: Genomic Colocalization and Enrichment Analyses

To decipher the molecular basis of health and disease, profiling multiple molecular modalities is a common practice [e.g., genetic variation, transcription, chromatin accessibility, epigenomic marks, binding sites, and three dimensional (3D) genome architecture]. Most of these molecular assays generate lists of genomic loci that are relevant to the trait/phenotype under investigation. Functional interpretation of these lists is often carried out through colocalization and enrichment analyses (Kanduri et al., 2018), which is akin to gene ontology/pathway analysis for lists of genes. A wide range of tools and methodologies have been developed over the past decade to perform colocalization and enrichment analyses of genomic regions. Given the availability and continuous generation of massive high resolution, cell-specific public datasets (e.g., ENCODE, RoadMap Epigenomics, GTEx, and BLUEPRINT), both existing and novel colocalization/enrichment analysis strategies will continue to generate new knowledge in our understanding of the molecular basis of health and disease. To highlight current research demonstrating the utility of colocalization/enrichment analysis, we invited contributions for a special Research Topic. The received contributions in this article collection include a comprehensive literature review, tools that extend the state-of-the-art methodology and enhance the user convenience in performing colocalization/enrichment analyses, and applied work that demonstrates the utility of colocalization/enrichment analyses.