Transcriptional Silencers: Driving Gene Expression with the Brakes On.
Trends Genet
; 37(6): 514-527, 2021 06.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-33712326
ABSTRACT
Silencers are regulatory DNA elements that reduce transcription from their target promoters; they are the repressive counterparts of enhancers. Although discovered decades ago, and despite evidence of their importance in development and disease, silencers have been much less studied than enhancers. Recently, however, a series of papers have reported systematic studies of silencers in various model systems. Silencers are often bifunctional regulatory elements that can also act as enhancers, depending on cellular context, and are enriched for expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) and disease-associated variants. There is not yet evidence of a 'silencer chromatin signature', in the distribution of histone modifications or associated proteins, that is common to all silencers; instead, silencers may fall into various subclasses, acting by distinct (and possibly overlapping) mechanisms.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Regulatory Sequences, Nucleic Acid
/
Gene Expression Regulation
/
Gene Silencing
Limits:
Animals
/
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
Trends Genet
Journal subject:
GENETICA
Year:
2021
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United States