Silencers, Enhancers, and the Multifunctional Regulatory Genome

Marc S Halfon

doi:10.1016/j.tig.2019.12.005

Silencers, Enhancers, and the Multifunctional Regulatory Genome

Trends Genet. 2020 Mar;36(3):149-151. doi: 10.1016/j.tig.2019.12.005. Epub 2020 Jan 7.

Author

Marc S Halfon¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Biochemistry, University at Buffalo-State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA; NY State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences, Buffalo, NY, USA; Department of Biological Sciences, University at Buffalo-State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA; Department of Biomedical Informatics, University at Buffalo-State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA; Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Program in Cancer Genetics, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, Buffalo, NY, USA. Electronic address: mshalfon@buffalo.edu.

Abstract

Negative regulation of gene expression by transcriptional silencers has been difficult to study due to limited defined examples. A new study by Gisselbrecht et al. has dramatically increased the number of identified silencers and reveals that they are bifunctional regulatory sequences that also act as gene expression-promoting enhancers.

Publication types

Comment

MeSH terms

Animals
Drosophila*
Enhancer Elements, Genetic*

Grants and funding

R01 GM114067/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/United States