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An activation‐independent role of transcription factors in insulator function
Author(s) -
Fourel Geneviève,
Boscheron Cécile,
Revardel Émanuelle,
Lebrun Éléonore,
Hu YanFen,
Simmen Katia Carmine,
Müller Karin,
Li Rong,
Mermod Nicolas,
Gilson Éric
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
embo reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.584
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1469-3178
pISSN - 1469-221X
DOI - 10.1093/embo-reports/kve024
Subject(s) - chromatin , gene silencing , subtelomere , insulator (electricity) , biology , promoter , nucleosome , microbiology and biotechnology , genetics , transcription factor , transcription (linguistics) , telomere , chia pet , dna , gene , physics , gene expression , linguistics , philosophy , optoelectronics
Chromatin insulators are defined as transcriptionally neutral elements that prevent negative or positive influence from extending across chromatin to a promoter. Here we show that yeast subtelomeric anti‐silencing regions behave as boundaries to telomere‐driven silencing and also allow discontinuous propagation of silent chromatin. These two facets of insulator activity, boundary and silencing discontinuity, can be recapitulated by tethering various transcription activation domains to tandem sites on DNA. Importantly, we show that these insulator activities do not involve direct transcriptional activation of the reporter promoter. These findings predict that certain promoters behave as insulators and partition genomes in functionally independent domains.