解读动态代码:在不断变化的基因组中通过转录因子识别DNA

Tissue-specific transcription factors contribute to diverse cellular functions in mammals. For example, the gene for beta globin, a major component of hemoglobin, is present in all cells of the body. However, it is only expressed in red blood cells because the transcription factors that can bind to the promoter sequences of the beta globin gene are only expressed in these cells. Tissue-specific transcription factors also ensure that mutations in these factors may impair only the function of...

Tissue-specific transcription factors contribute to diverse cellular functions in mammals. For example, the gene for beta globin, a major component of hemoglobin, is present in all cells of the body. However, it is only expressed in red blood cells because the transcription factors that can bind to the promoter sequences of the beta globin gene are only expressed in these cells. Tissue-specific transcription factors also ensure that mutations in these factors may impair only the function of...

Proteins that regulate transcription can do so either via direct contact with RNA Polymerase or through indirect interactions facilitated by adaptors, mediators, histone-modifying proteins, and nucleosome remodelers. Direct interactions to activate transcription is seen in bacteria as well as in some eukaryotic genes. In these cases, upstream activation sequences are adjacent to the promoters, and the activator proteins interact directly with the transcriptional machinery. For example, in...

Transcriptional regulators bind to specific cis-regulatory sequences in the DNA to regulate gene transcription. These cis-regulatory sequences are very short, usually less than ten nucleotide pairs in length. The short length means that there is a high probability of the exact same sequence randomly occurring throughout the genome.  Since regulators can also bind to groups of similar sequences, this further increases the chances of random binding. Transcriptional regulators form...

Transcription activators are proteins that promote the transcription of genes from DNA to RNA. In most cases, these proteins contain two separate domains ‒ a domain that binds to DNA and a domain for activating transcription; however, in some cases, a single domain is responsible for both binding and activation of transcription, as seen in the glucocorticoid receptor and MyoD.
The binding domains are capable of recognizing and interacting with regulatory sequences on the DNA. These...

Transcription elongation is a dynamic process that alters depending upon the sequence heterogeneity of the DNA being transcribed. Hence, it is not surprising that the elongation complex's composition also varies along the way while transcribing a gene.
The transcription elongation is regulated via pausing of RNA polymerase on several occasions during transcription. In bacteria, these halts are necessary because the transcription of DNA into mRNA is coupled to the translation of that mRNA...