Studies of the role of the Drosophila scs and scs' insulators in defining boundaries of a chromosome puff.

ABSTRACT: Insulators are DNA elements that establish independent transcriptional domains within eukaryotic genomes. The Drosophila scs and scs' insulators localize near the borders of a structural domain in the polytene chromosomes, known as a puff, produced by transcription of the 87A heat shock protein (hsp) genes. It has been suggested that scs and scs' are boundary elements that delimit this decondensed chromatin domain, reflecting the mechanism by which these sequences act to constrain regulatory interactions. This model was tested using transposons that carried a yellow gene to assess enhancer blocking and an hsp70-lacZ gene to examine the structure of a heat shock puff in the presence and absence of insulators. We found that although scs and scs' blocked enhancer function, these sequences did

SUBMITTER: Kuhn EJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC344178 | biostudies-literature | 2004 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature