Transcriptional repression in development

It is becoming increasingly clear that transcriptional repression is at least as important as transcriptional activation for establishing cell-type specific patterns of gene expression during embryogenesis. Recent studies in Drosophila suggest that repressors fall into two categories, short-range and long-range repressors. The former permit enhancer autonomy in modular promoters, whereas the latter function in a dominant fashion to silence multiple enhancers.