Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: BACKGROUND: Site-specific transcription factors (TFs) are coordinators of developmental and physiological gene expression programs. Their binding to cis-regulatory modules of target genes mediates the precise cell- and context-specific activation and repression of genes. The expression of TFs should therefore reflect the core expression program of each cell. RESULTS: We studied the expression dynamics of about 750 TFs using the available genomics resources in Drosophila melanogaster. We find that 95% of these TFs are expressed at some point during embryonic development, with a peak roughly between 10 and 12 hours after egg laying, the core stages of organogenesis. We address the differential utilization of DNA-binding domains in different developmental programs systematically in a spatio-temporal context, and show that the zinc finger class of TFs is predominantly early expressed, while Homeobox TFs exhibit later expression in embryogenesis. CONCLUSIONS: Previous work, dissecting cis-regulatory modules during Drosophila development, suggests that TFs are deployed in groups acting in a cooperative manner. In contrast, we find that there is rapid exchange of co-expressed partners amongst the fly TFs, at rates similar to the genome-wide dynamics of co-expression clusters. This suggests there may also be a high level of combinatorial complexity of TFs at cis-regulatory modules.
Source: Genome biology
Authors: Boris Adryan, Sarah A Teichmann
Institutions: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, University of Cambridge
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $5,490
OpenAlex ID: W2146205309