Using transgenic reporter assays to functionally characterize enhancers in animals
Open accessAbstract
Enhancers or cis-regulatory modules play an instructive role in regulating gene expression during animal development and in response to the environment. Despite their importance, we only have an incomplete map of enhancers in the genome and our understanding of the mechanisms governing their function is still limited. Recent advances in genomics provided powerful tools to generate genome-wide maps of potential enhancers. However, most of these methods are based on indirect measures of enhancer activity and have to be followed by functional testing. Animal transgenesis has been a valuable method to functionally test and characterize enhancers in vivo. In this review I discuss how different transgenic strategies are utilized to characterize enhancers in model organisms focusing on studies in Drosophila and mouse. I will further discuss recent large-scale transgenic efforts to systematically identify and catalog enhancers as well as highlight the challenges and future directions in the field.
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The study of mammalian enhancers is hampered by the observation that these elements are defined by criteria only partially or indirectly related to their role in vivo.
“The study of mammalian enhancers is hampered by the observation that these elements are defined by criteria only partially or indirectly related to their role in vivo9,10.”
From Genetic dissection of the α-globin super-enhancer in vivo (2016) · cites this paper as [10]
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“Indeed, many TF binding sites identi fi ed by ChIP wereshowntobenegativewhentestedfor invivo enhanceractivity[51, 52], which can either re fl ect an artifact of the method [53,134] or the promiscuousnatureofTFbinding.”
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Genetic dissection of the α-globin super-enhancer in vivo
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How subtle changes in 3D structure can create large changes in transcription
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- Authors
- Kvon, E. Z.
- Affiliations
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (US)
- Corresponding author
- Kvon, Evgeny Z.
- ORCID
- Kvon, Evgeny Z.
- Venue
- Genomics
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2015-09
- Volume
- 106
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 185-192
- ISSN
- 0888-7543 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W633558395
- Cited by
- 73
- References
- 12
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 3
- FWCI
- 0.58
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/legal/tdmrep-license (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/open-access/userlicense/1.0/ (vor, 909 d)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-017 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-037 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-012 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-029 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-004 (stm-asf)
- Locations
- Genomics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Helen Hay Whitney Foundation
- Department of Energy (DE-AC02-05CH11231)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics and Chromatin Dynamics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Developmental Biology and Gene Regulation
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Plant Science › Chromosomal and Genetic Variations
- Keywords
- enhancers, cis-regulatory modules, enhancer function, enhancer mapping, Drosophila, mice, transgenesis, gene expression regulation, model organisms
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Drosophila, Enhancer Elements, Genetic, Gene Expression Regulation, Gene Transfer Techniques, Genomics, Animals, Genetically Modified, Mice
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