Collaborative repressive action of the antagonistic ETS transcription factors Pointed and Yan fine-tunes gene expression to confer robustness inDrosophila

• DOI: 10.1242/dev.165985
• Publication Date: 2018-05-30T10:45:15Z
• Authors: Jemma L. Webber; Jie Zhang; Alex Massey; Nicelio Sanchez-L...; Ilaria Rebay
• Keywords: Corepressor; RNA polymerase II; Transcription; Robustness

The acquisition of cellular identity during development depends on precise spatiotemporal regulation gene expression, with combinatorial interactions between transcription factors, accessory proteins and the basal machinery together translating complex signaling inputs into appropriate expression outputs. Drosophila ETS family factors Yan Pointed, whose opposing repressive activating orchestrate numerous cell fate transitions downstream receptor tyrosine kinase signaling, provide one premier systems for studying this process. Current models describe differentiative transition as a switch from Yan-mediated repression to Pointed-mediated activation common target genes. We here new layer whereby Pointed co-occupy regulatory elements coordinately repress unexpectedly required genome-wide occupancy both corepressor Groucho. Using even-skipped test-case, synergistic genetic Groucho, components RNA polymerase II pausing suggest integrates multiple scales confer robustness. speculate that mechanism may be used broadly fine-tune many developmentally critical