Skip Navigation



Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access published online on November 2, 2007
Nucleic Acids Research, doi:10.1093/nar/gkm875
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow Print PDF (1441K) Freely available
Right arrow Screen PDF (405K) Freely available
Right arrowOA All Versions of this Article:
36/suppl_1/D83    most recent
gkm875v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Commercial Re-use Guidelines
for Open Access NAR Content
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Bao, L.
Right arrow Articles by Cui, Y.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Bao, L.
Right arrow Articles by Cui, Y.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© 2007 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.

Database Issue

CTCFBSDB: a CTCF-binding site database for characterization of vertebrate genomic insulators

Lei Bao, Mi Zhou and Yan Cui*

Department of Molecular Sciences, Center of Genomics and Bioinformatics, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, 858 Madison Avenue, Memphis, TN 38163, USA

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +1 9014483240; Fax: +1 9014487360; Email: ycui2{at}utmem.edu

Received August 9, 2007. Revised September 30, 2007. Accepted October 1, 2007.

Recent studies on transcriptional control of gene expression have pinpointed the importance of long-range interactions and three-dimensional organization of chromatins within the nucleus. Distal regulatory elements such as enhancers may activate transcription over long distances; hence, their action must be restricted within appropriate boundaries to prevent illegitimate activation of non-target genes. Insulators are DNA elements with enhancer-blocking and/or chromatin-bordering functions. In vertebrates, the versatile transcription regulator CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF) is the only identified trans-acting factor that confers enhancer-blocking insulator activity. CTCF-binding sites were found to be commonly distributed along the vertebrate genomes. We have constructed a CTCF-binding site database (CTCFBSDB) to characterize experimentally identified and computationally predicted CTCF-binding sties. Biological knowledge and data from multiple resources have been integrated into the database, including sequence data, genetic polymorphisms, function annotations, histone methylation profiles, gene expression profiles and comparative genomic information. A web-based user interface was implemented for data retrieval, analysis and visualization. In silico prediction of CTCF-binding motifs is provided to facilitate the identification of candidate insulators in the query sequences submitted by users. The database can be accessed at http://insulatordb.utmem.edu/


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.