1. CTCF is conserved from Drosophila to humans and confers enhancer blocking of the Fab-8 insulator
- Author
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Rainer Renkawitz, Britta Grewe, Rolf Ohlsson, Galina N. Filippova, Marek Bartkuhn, Renate Renkawitz-Pohl, Rüdiger Arnold, Adam Munhall, Elena M. Pugacheva, Dmitry Loukinov, Jumin Zhou, Hanlim Moon, Sheryl T. Smith, Les J. Burke, Qi Chen, and Victor V. Lobanenkov
- Subjects
CCCTC-Binding Factor ,Molecular Sequence Data ,Scientific Report ,Enhancer RNAs ,Biology ,Biochemistry ,DNA-binding protein ,Genetics ,Enhancer trap ,Animals ,Drosophila Proteins ,Humans ,Amino Acid Sequence ,Enhancer ,Molecular Biology ,Zinc finger ,Homeodomain Proteins ,Chromatin ,DNA-Binding Proteins ,Repressor Proteins ,Enhancer Elements, Genetic ,Gene Expression Regulation ,CTCF ,Drosophila ,Insulator Elements ,Drosophila Protein - Abstract
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.
- Published
- 2004