A molecular link between gene-specific and chromosome-wide transcriptional repression
Abstract
Gene-specific and chromosome-wide mechanisms of transcriptional regulation control development in multicellular organisms. SDC-2, the determinant of hermaphrodite fate in Caenorhabditis elegans, is a paradigm for both modes of regulation. SDC-2 represses transcription of X chromosomes to achieve dosage compensation, and it also represses the male sex-determination gene her-1 to elicit hermaphrodite differentiation. We show here that SDC-2 recruits the entire dosage compensation complex to her-1, directing thisX-chromosome repression machinery to silence an individual, autosomal gene. Functional dissection of her-1 in vivo revealed DNA recognition elements required for SDC-2 binding, recruitment of the dosage compensation complex, and transcriptional repression. Elements within her-1 differed in location, sequence, and strength of repression, implying that the dosage compensation complex may regulate transcription along the X chromosome using diverse recognition elements that play distinct roles in repression.
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Footnotes
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Present addresses: 1Current Biology at Cell Press, 1100 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA; 2Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University Medical Center, Stanford, CA 94305-5428, USA.
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↵3 Corresponding author.
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E-MAIL bjmeyer{at}uclink4.berkeley.edu; FAX (510) 643-5584.
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Article and publication are at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.972702.
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- Received December 27, 2001.
- Accepted February 8, 2002.
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
