cis-regulatory element

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cis-regulatory elements (CREs) are regions of non-coding DNA which regulate the transcription of neighboring genes. CREs are vital components of genetic regulatory networks, which in turn control morphogenesis, the development of anatomy, and other aspects of developmental biology, now being unified in evo-devo.

CREs are found in the vicinity of the genes that they regulate. CREs typically regulate gene transcription by functioning as binding sites for transcription factors. A single transcription factor may bind to many CREs, and hence control the expression of many genes. The Latin prefix cis means "on this side", i.e. on the same molecule of DNA as the gene(s) to be transcribed. CREs are often but not always upstream of the transcription site.


The genome of an organism contains anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of different genes, all encoding a singular product or more. For numerous reasons, including organizational maintenance, energy conservation, and generating phenotypic variance, it is important that genes are only expressed when they are needed. The most efficient way for an organism to regulate genetic expression is at the transcriptional level. CREs function to control transcription by acting nearby or within a gene. The most well characterized types of CREs are enhancers and promoters. Both of these sequence elements are structural regions of DNA that serve as transcriptional regulators.


Promoters are relatively short sequences of DNA which include the site where transcription is initiated and the region approximately 35 bp upstream or downstream from the initiation site (bp).[1] In eukaryotes, promoters usually have the following four components: the TATA box, a TFIIB recognition site, an initiator, and the downstream core promoter element.[1] It has been found that a single gene can contain multiple promoter sites.[2] In order to initiate transcription of the downstream gene, a host of DNA-binding proteins called transcription factors (TFs) must bind sequentially to this region.[1] Only once this region has been bound with the appropriate set of TFs, and in the proper order, can RNA polymerase bind and begin transcribing the gene. Contrastingly, enhancers influence transcription of genes on the same molecule of DNA and can be found upstream, downstream, within the introns, or even relatively far away from the gene they regulate. Multiple enhancers can act in a coordinated fashion to regulate transcription of one gene.[3]

Evolutionary role



An example of a cis-acting regulatory sequence is the operator in the lac operon. This DNA sequence is bound by the lac repressor, which, in turn, prevents transcription of the adjacent genes on the same DNA molecule. The lac operator is, thus, considered to "act in cis" on the regulation of the nearby genes. The operator itself does not code for any protein or RNA.




Examples in RNA

RNA elements
Type Abbr. Function Distribution Ref.
Riboswitch Gene regulation Bacteria, Eukaryota [11]
RNA thermometer Gene regulation Bacteria [12]

See also


  1. ^ a b c Butler, J. E.F. (2002). "The RNA polymerase II core promoter: a key component in the regulation of gene expression". Genes & Development. 16 (20): 2583–2592. ISSN 0890-9369. PMID 12381658. doi:10.1101/gad.1026202. 
  2. ^ Sangdun Choi (17 May 2008). Introduction to Systems Biology. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 78. ISBN 978-1-59745-531-2. 
  3. ^ a b Wittkopp, Patricia J.; Kalay, Gizem (2011). "Cis-regulatory elements: molecular mechanisms and evolutionary processes underlying divergence". Nature Reviews Genetics. 13 (1): 59–69. ISSN 1471-0056. PMID 22143240. doi:10.1038/nrg3095. 
  4. ^ Bekaert M, Firth AE, Zhang Y, Gladyshev VN, Atkins JF, Baranov PV (2010). "Recode-2: new design, new search tools, and many more genes.". Nucleic Acids Res. 38 (Database issue): D69–74. PMC 2808893Freely accessible. PMID 19783826. doi:10.1093/nar/gkp788. 
  5. ^ Chung BY, Firth AE, Atkins JF (2010). "Frameshifting in alphaviruses: a diversity of 3' stimulatory structures.". J Mol Biol. 397 (2): 448–56. PMID 20114053. doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2010.01.044. 
  6. ^ Giedroc DP, Cornish PV (2009). "Frameshifting RNA pseudoknots: structure and mechanism.". Virus Res. 139 (2): 193–208. PMC 2670756Freely accessible. PMID 18621088. doi:10.1016/j.virusres.2008.06.008. 
  7. ^ Mokrejs M, Vopálenský V, Kolenaty O, et al. (January 2006). "IRESite: the database of experimentally verified IRES structures (". Nucleic Acids Res. 34 (Database issue): D125–30. PMC 1347444Freely accessible. PMID 16381829. doi:10.1093/nar/gkj081. 
  8. ^ Hentze MW, Kühn LC (August 1996). "Molecular control of vertebrate iron metabolism: mRNA-based regulatory circuits operated by iron, nitric oxide, and oxidative stress". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 93 (16): 8175–82. PMC 38642Freely accessible. PMID 8710843. doi:10.1073/pnas.93.16.8175. 
  9. ^ Platt T (1986). "Transcription termination and the regulation of gene expression.". Annu Rev Biochem. 55: 339–72. PMID 3527045. doi:10.1146/ 
  10. ^ Théobald-Dietrich A, Giegé R, Rudinger-Thirion J (2005). "Evidence for the existence in mRNAs of a hairpin element responsible for ribosome dependent pyrrolysine insertion into proteins". Biochimie. 87 (9–10): 813–7. PMID 16164991. doi:10.1016/j.biochi.2005.03.006. 
  11. ^ Breaker RR (2008). "Complex riboswitches". Science. 319 (5871): 1795–7. PMID 18369140. doi:10.1126/science.1152621. 
  12. ^ Kortmann, J; Narberhaus, F (Mar 16, 2012). "Bacterial RNA thermometers: molecular zippers and switches.". Nature Reviews. Microbiology. 10 (4): 255–65. PMID 22421878. doi:10.1038/nrmicro2730. 
  13. ^ Walczak, R; Westhof E; Carbon P; Krol A (1996). "A novel RNA structural motif in the selenocysteine insertion element of eukaryotic selenoprotein mRNAs". RNA. 2 (4): 367–379. PMC 1369379Freely accessible. PMID 8634917. 

Further reading

  • Wray GA (2007). "The evolutionary significance of cis-regulatory mutations". Nature Reviews Genetics. 8 (3): 206–216. PMID 17304246. doi:10.1038/nrg2063. 
  • Gompel N, Prud'homme B, Wittkopp PJ, Kassner VA, Carroll SB (2005). "Chance caught on the wing: cis regulation evolution and the origin of pigmentation patterns in Drosophila". Nature. 433 (7025): 481–487. PMID 15690032. doi:10.1038/nature03235. 
  • Prud'homme B, Gompel N, Rokas A, Kassner VA, Williams TM, Yeh SD, True JR, Carroll SB (2006). "Repeated morphological evolution through cis regulatory changes in a pleiotropic gene". Nature. 440 (7087): 1050–1053. PMID 16625197. doi:10.1038/nature04597. 
  • Stern DL (2000). "Perspective: Evolutionary developmental biology and the problem of variation". Evolution. 54 (4): 1079–1091. PMID 11005278. doi:10.1111/j.0014-3820.2000.tb00544.x. 
  • Weatherbee, Scott D.; Carroll, Sean B.; Grenier, Jennifer K. (2004). From DNA to Diversity: Molecular Genetics and the Evolution of Animal Design. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 1-4051-1950-0. 
Retrieved from ""
This content was retrieved from Wikipedia :
This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article "cis-regulatory element"; it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA