CTCF is conserved from Drosophila to humans and confers enhancer blocking of the Fab-8 insulator

Eukaryotic transcriptional regulation often involves regulatory elements separated from the cognate genes by long distances, whereas appropriately positioned insulator or enhancer‐blocking elements shield promoters from illegitimate enhancer action. Four proteins have been identified in Drosophila m...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:EMBO reports 2005-02, Vol.6 (2), p.165-170
Main Authors: Moon, Hanlim, Filippova, Galina, Loukinov, Dmitry, Pugacheva, Elena, Chen, Qi, Smith, Sheryl T, Munhall, Adam, Grewe, Britta, Bartkuhn, Marek, Arnold, Rüdiger, Burke, Les J, Renkawitz-Pohl, Renate, Ohlsson, Rolf, Zhou, Jumin, Renkawitz, Rainer, Lobanenkov, Victor
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abdominal-B
Amino Acid Sequence
Animals
CCCTC-Binding Factor
CTCF
DNA-Binding Proteins - genetics
DNA-Binding Proteins - metabolism
Drosophila
Drosophila - genetics
Drosophila - metabolism
Drosophila Proteins - genetics
Drosophila Proteins - metabolism
enhancer blocking
Enhancer Elements, Genetic
Fab-8
Gene Expression Regulation - physiology
Homeodomain Proteins - genetics
Homeodomain Proteins - metabolism
Humans
Insulator Elements
Medicin och hälsovetenskap
Molecular Sequence Data
Repressor Proteins - genetics
Repressor Proteins - metabolism
Scientific Report
Vertebrates
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Eukaryotic transcriptional regulation often involves regulatory elements separated from the cognate genes by long distances, whereas appropriately positioned insulator or enhancer‐blocking elements shield promoters from illegitimate enhancer action. Four proteins have been identified in Drosophila mediating enhancer blocking—Su(Hw), Zw5, BEAF32 and GAGA factor. In vertebrates, the single protein CTCF, with 11 highly conserved zinc fingers, confers enhancer blocking in all known chromatin insulators. Here, we characterize an orthologous CTCF factor in Drosophila with a similar domain structure, binding site specificity and transcriptional repression activity as in vertebrates. In addition, we demonstrate that one of the insulators ( Fab‐8 ) in the Drosophila Abdominal‐B locus mediates enhancer blocking by dCTCF. Therefore, the enhancer‐blocking protein CTCF and, most probably, the mechanism of enhancer blocking mediated by this remarkably versatile factor are conserved from Drosophila to humans.
ISSN:1469-221X
1469-3178
1469-221X
DOI:10.1038/sj.embor.7400334