473982 Enhancer Control of Transcriptional Bursts

Monday, November 14, 2016
Grand Ballroom B (Hilton San Francisco Union Square)
Bomyi Lim, Takashi Fukaya and Michael Levine, Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

Transcription is episodic, consisting of a series of discontinuous bursts. Using live imaging methods and quantitative analysis, we examine transcriptional bursting in living Drosophila embryos. Different developmental enhancers positioned downstream of synthetic reporter genes produce transcriptional bursts with similar amplitudes and duration, but generate very different bursting frequencies, with strong enhancers producing more bursts than weak enhancers. Insertion of an insulator reduces the number of bursts and the corresponding level of gene expression, suggesting that enhancer regulation of bursting frequency is a key parameter of gene control in development. We also show that linked reporter genes exhibit coordinated bursting profiles when regulated by a shared enhancer, challenging conventional models of enhancer-promoter looping.

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See more of this Session: Poster Session: Bioengineering
See more of this Group/Topical: Food, Pharmaceutical & Bioengineering Division