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A Simple Grammar Defines Activating and Repressing cis-Regulatory Elements in Photoreceptors
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

A Simple Grammar Defines Activating and Repressing cis-Regulatory Elements in Photoreceptors

Michael A. White, Jamie C. Kwasnieski, Connie A. Myers, Susan Q. Shen, Joseph C. Corbo and Barak A. Cohen
Cell reports (Cambridge), Vol.17(5), pp.1247-1254
10/25/2016
DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2016.09.066
PMCID: PMC5123866
PMID: 27783940
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2016.09.066View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Transcription factors often activate and repress different target genes in the same cell. How activation and repression are encoded by different arrangements of transcription factor binding sites in cis-regulatory elements is poorly understood. We investigated how sites for the transcription factor CRX encode both activation and repression in photo-receptors by assaying thousands of genomic and synthetic cis-regulatory elements in wild-type and Crx(-/-) retinas. We found that sequences with high affinity for CRX repress transcription, whereas sequences with lower affinity activate. This rule is modified by a cooperative interaction between CRX sites and sites for the transcription factor NRL, which overrides the repressive effect of high affinity for CRX. Our results show how simple rearrangements of transcription factor binding sites encode qualitatively different responses to a single transcription factor and explain how CRX plays multiple cis-regulatory roles in the same cell.
Cell Biology Life Sciences & Biomedicine Science & Technology

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