Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access originally published online on April 16, 2009
Nucleic Acids Research 2009 37(11):3689-3698; doi:10.1093/nar/gkp232
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Nucleic Acids Research, 2009, Vol. 37, No. 11 3689-3698
© 2009 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Gene Regulation, Chromatin and Epigenetics |
The C. elegans Snail homolog CES-1 can activate gene expression in vivo and share targets with bHLH transcription factors
1Program in Gene Function and Expression and Program in Molecular Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, USA, 2Department of Genetics, Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, NH 03755, USA and 3Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, University of Calgary, Health Sciences Centre, Calgary, Alberta T2N 4N1, Canada
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +1 508 856 4364; Fax: +1 508 856 5460; Email: marian.walhout{at}umassmed.edu
Received February 9, 2009. Revised March 25, 2009. Accepted March 28, 2009.
Snail-type transcription factors (TFs) are found in numerous metazoan organisms and function in a plethora of cellular and developmental processes including mesoderm and neuronal development, apoptosis and cancer. So far, Snail-type TFs are exclusively known as transcriptional repressors. They repress gene expression by recruiting transcriptional co-repressors and/or by preventing DNA binding of activators from the basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) family of TFs to CAGGTG E-box sequences. Here we report that the Caenorhabditis elegans Snail-type TF CES-1 can activate transcription in vivo. Moreover, we provide results that suggest that CES-1 can share its binding site with bHLH TFs, in different tissues, rather than only occluding bHLH DNA binding. Together, our data indicate that there are at least two types of CES-1 target genes and, therefore, that the molecular function of Snail-type TFs is more plastic than previously appreciated.
Present address: Bart Deplancke, Institute of Bio-engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, CH-1015, Switzerland.
The authors wish it to be known that, in their opinion, the first two authors should be regarded as joint First Authors.