Biology
Document Type
Article
Abstract
There are many examples within gene complexes of transcriptional enhancers interacting with only a subset of target promoters. A number of molecular mechanisms including promoter competition, insulators and chromatin looping are thought to play a role in regulating these interactions. At the Drosophila bithorax complex (BX-C), the IAB5 enhancer specifically drives gene expression only from the Abdominal-B (Abd-B) promoter, even though the enhancer and promoter are 55 kb apart and are separated by at least three insulators. In previous studies, we discovered that a 255 bp cis-regulatory module, the promoter tethering element (PTE), located 5′ of the Abd-B transcriptional start site is able to tether IAB5 to the Abd-B promoter in transgenic embryo assays. In this study we examine the functional role of the PTE at the endogenous BXC using transposon-mediated mutagenesis. Disruption of the PTE by P element insertion results in a loss of enhancerdirected Abd-B expression during embryonic development and a homeotic transformation of abdominal segments. A partial deletion of the PTE and neighboring upstream genomic sequences by imprecise excision of the P element also results in a similar loss of Abd-B expression in embryos. These results demonstrate that the PTE is an essential component of the regulatory network at the BX-C and is required in vivo to mediate specific long-range enhancer-promoter interactions. © 2011 Ho et al.
Publication Title
PLoS ONE
Publication Date
1-21-2011
Volume
6
Issue
1
ISSN
1932-6203
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0016283
Keywords
Drosophila melanogaster, gene expression
Repository Citation
Ho, Margaret C.; Schiller, Benjamin J.; Akbari, Omar S.; Bae, Esther; and Drewell, Robert A., "Disruption of the Abdominal-B promoter tethering element results in a loss of long-range enhancer-directed Hox gene expression in Drosophila" (2011). Biology. 140.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_biology/140
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Copyright Conditions
Ho, M. C., Schiller, B. J., Akbari, O. S., Bae, E., & Drewell, R. A. (2011). Disruption of the abdominal-B promoter tethering element results in a loss of long-range enhancer-directed Hox gene expression in Drosophila. PLoS One, 6(1), e16283.
