Structural variants from donor-specific assemblies affect recurrent chromatin contact divergence in humans
Structural variants (SVs) are a major source of human genetic diversity, yet their contribution to three-dimensional (3D) genome organization remains difficult to resolve using a standard reference genome. Here, we integrate haplotype-resolved chromatin interaction maps across 354 human and 12 nonhuman ape haplotypes with matched genome assemblies and long-read transcriptomes to determine how inherited SVs influence chromatin organization. We observe significant improvements in contact mapping, with 13.2% of cis Hi-C contacts showing >25 kbp changes in inferred genomic separation and an additional 2.8% of valid contact pairs recovered when using donor-specific assemblies instead of standard references. We show that haplotype-specific chromatin differences are highly selective rather than pervasive, concentrating within 1,790 recurrent contact difference hotspots associated with a restricted subset of SVs. We identified 2,495 chromatin-structure-associated SVs that are enriched in regulatory genomic contexts and are linked to expression variation. Notably, more than 90% of these SVs are derived in the human lineage, consistent with recent remodeling of regulatory architecture at the population level. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating haplotype diversity from pangenomes into studies of chromatin organization and provide a framework for understanding how inherited genomic differences are linked to functional consequences across populations and evolution.