Promoter strength delimits enhancer threshold in the early Drosophila embryo

The enhancer threshold is defined as the minimum concentration of transcription factors (TFs) required to elicit an enhancer response in a given time and space. Here, evidence is presented that the enhancer threshold is relative to promoter strength in the early Drosophila embryo. The apparently inactive even-skipped (eve) minimal stripe element (MSE), in which a single Hunchback (Hb)-binding site is deleted, is functionally complemented by the hsp70 promoter in transgenic embryos. Forced pause release of RNA polymerase II (Pol II) and transcription bubble assays show that both eve and heat shock protein 70 (hsp70) promoters exhibit paused Pol II. However, bioinformatics analyses and transient transfection assays indicate that the strength of the hsp70 promoter is much stronger than that of the eve promoter. Consistently, inactive MSE function is also restored by promoters stronger than the eve promoter. It is conceivable that the functional complementarity between enhancer and promoter strengths defines the enhancer threshold, thus determining whether a genomic locus acts as an enhancer for a particular promoter.