Lecture 5 Flashcards
What do protein binding transcription control regions do?
Regulate expression of euk genes, they are located at multiple sites at various distances from the txn start site
What are the two types of protein binding txn control regions?
Promoter proximal elements and enhancers
What are promoter proximal elements and enhancers?
Gee and cell-type-specific regulatory elements on DNA
What are transcription activators and repressors?
Modular proteins containing a DNA binding domain and one or more activation or repression domains
How do we find gene regulatory sequences?
Link scanning reporter gene technique for identifying gene regulatory elements on DNA
What is linker scanning mutagenesis?
A way to find gene regulatory sequences.
What are the steps to linker scanning mutagenesis?
- Buy a plasmid that contains a reporter gene, usually a gene that encodes an enzyme
- The ORF of the reporter gene (tk) on the plasmid has no promoter
- Upstream of the tk ORF you clone a large piece of DNA that you know is controlling your gene (not tk) of interest
- Replace small pieces of the cloned regulatory DNA by a “linker”, produce multiple plasmids with linker subs
- Transform each individual plasmid in a cell culture and measure the activity of the reporter
- Loss of reporter activity means that you have hit a regulatory sequence
What is a reporter gene?
DNA sequence that encodes for protein sequence that we recognize
What do reporter plasmids contain?
- An ORF for an enzyme
- No promoter proximal regulatory sequences
- Multiple cloning site (MCS) for the cloning a regulatory sequence
- Translation initiation elements upstream of the reporter gene
- Poly A+ signal downstream of the reporter gene
What are some control elements that regulate gene expression in euk? TATA vs CpG islands
TATA promoter
Promoter elements: position RNA pol II to initiate txn at the start site, influence the rate of txn
Enhancers: can be upstream or downstream or in introns
Promoter-proximal elements: found upstream and downstream of txn start sites
CpG island promoter
Txn initiates at several sites in both the sense and antisense directions from the ends of the CpG-rich region
Sense direction transcripts are elongated and processed into mRNA by RNA splicing
Genes express mRNAs with alternative 5’ exons determined by the txn start site
Promoters contain promoter-proximal control elements
What are some characteristics of enhancers?
Can be far from the promoter, bend chromatin/DNA, orientation doesn’t matter, can be downstream or upstream, typically on the same chromosome
Enhancers are ___ regulatory elements
Distal
What are the main differences between enhancers and promoters?
Promoters function within a short distance while enhancers function over a long distance
Promoters are immediately upstream from the initiation site (RNA Pol II) while enhancers can be upstream, downstream from the start or within introns
Promoters are position-dependent which enhancers are position-independent
Promoters are orientation-dependent while enhancers are orientation-independent
What inactivates transcription?
Chromatin condensation blocks RNA pol and GTFs from interacting with promoters
What are the two things that repressor proteins can do?
Bind to txn control elements to inhibit txn initiation
Interact with multi protein co-repressor complexes to condense chromatin