Drosophila gypsy insulator and yellow enhancers regulate activity of yellow promoter through the same regulatory element

There is ample evidence that the enhancers of a promoterless yellow locus in one homologous chromosome can activate the yellow promoter in the other chromosome where the enhancers are inactive or deleted, which is indicative of a high specificity of the enhancer–promoter interaction in yellow. In this paper, we have found that the yellow sequence from −100 to −69 is essential for stimulation of the heterologous eve (TATA-containing) and white (TATA-less) promoters by the yellow enhancers from a distance. However, the presence of this sequence is not required when the yellow enhancers are directly fused to the heterologous promoters or are activated by the yeast GAL4 activator. Unexpectedly, the same promoter proximal region defines previously described promoter-specific, long-distance repression of the yellow promoter by the gypsy insulator on the mod(mdg4) ^u1 background. These finding suggest that proteins bound to the −100 to −69 sequence are essential for communication between the yellow promoter and upstream regulatory elements.     

GAL4/UAS系统在转基因技术中的应用研究进展

GAL4/UAS系统是一种转基因技术体系,其原理是利用特定的启动子或增强子,以组织特异性的方式激活酵母转录激活子GAL4的表达,GAL4又以同样的方式引起GAL4反应元件(UAS)-靶基因的转录。GAL4/UAS系统的关键点在于:GAL4基因和UAS-靶基因分别存在于两个转基因系中。GAL4转基因系中有转录激活子,但没有靶基因;在UAS-靶基因系中,转录激活子不存在,因而靶基因处于沉默状态,只有将GAL4转基因系与UAS-靶基因系进行杂交,才可能产生表达靶基因的后代。本文综述了GAL4/UAS系统的建立及其研究应用。