The snail repressor inhibits release, not elongation, of paused Pol II in the Drosophila embryo.

ABSTRACT: The development of the precellular Drosophila embryo is characterized by exceptionally rapid transitions in gene activity, with broadly distributed maternal regulatory gradients giving way to precise on/off patterns of gene expression within a one-hour window, between two and three hours after fertilization [1]. Transcriptional repression plays a pivotal role in this process, delineating sharp expression patterns (e.g., pair-rule stripes) within broad domains of gene activation. As many as 20 different sequence-specific repressors have been implicated in this process, yet the mechanisms by which they silence gene expression have remained elusive [2]. Here we report the development of a method for the quantitative visualization of transcriptional repression. We focus on the Snail repressor,

SUBMITTER: Bothma JP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3186076 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature