Promoter or enhancer, what's the difference? Deconstruction of established distinctions and presentation of a unifying model
Promoter or enhancer, what's the difference? Deconstruction of established distinctions and presentation of a unifying model
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DOI：
10.1002/bies.201400162
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发表时间：
2015-03-01
期刊：
影响因子：
4
通讯作者：
Andersson, Robin
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Andersson, Robin
基因转录受基因启动子和基因远端调控元件（称为增强子）的相互作用的严格控制。尽管对增强子进行了广泛的研究，但我们对其作用机制及其有限的时空活动的了解仍然非常有限。更好的理解将最终导致对基因转录控制和疾病中涉及的调节性遗传变异的作用的基本见解。在这里，我回顾并讨论了最先进的基因组学方法的优点和缺点，以本地化和推断增强子的活性。在不同的方法中，增强子RNA的分析产生最高的特异性，并且在检测体内活性方面可能是上级的。我讨论了它们与启动子的明显相似之处，这挑战了增强子和启动子作为不同实体的既定观点，并提出了一个统一的转录调控元件模型，其中活性，转录输出和调控功能是特定的。
Gene transcription is strictly controlled by the interplay of regulatory events at gene promoters and gene-distal regulatory elements called enhancers. Despite extensive studies of enhancers, we still have a very limited understanding of their mechanisms of action and their restricted spatio-temporal activities. A better understanding would ultimately lead to fundamental insights into the control of gene transcription and the action of regulatory genetic variants involved in disease. Here, I review and discuss pros and cons of state-of-the-art genomics methods to localize and infer the activity of enhancers. Among the different approaches, profiling of enhancer RNAs yields the highest specificity and may be superior in detecting in vivo activity. I discuss their apparent similarities to promoters, which challenge the established view of enhancers and promoters as distinct entities, and present a unifying model of regulatory elements in transcriptional regulation, in which activity, transcriptional output and regulatory function is context specific.