The TALE of new tools to study gene regulation
Monday, July 1, 2013 - 06:30
in Biology & Nature
In nearly every organism's genome, scattered between genes that encode proteins, long regulatory regions stretch across expanses of DNA. Understanding what role these so-called enhancer regions play in controlling the activation of genes has been a slow process for scientists—methods to study enhancers have required altering their genetic sequence or moving them from their normal spot in the genome. Now, Howard Hughes Medical Institute scientists have developed a new way to study enhancers, by using proteins called transcription activator-like effectors, or TALEs, to bind the regions of DNA.