title: "Hit-and-run": Transcription factors get caught in the act.
abstract: A key challenge for understanding transcriptional regulation is being able to measure transcription factor (TF)-DNA binding events with sufficient spatial and temporal resolution; that is, when and where TFs occupy their cognate sites. A recent study by Para et al. has highlighted the dynamics underlying the activation of gene expression by a master regulator TF. This study provides concrete evidence for a long-standing hypothesis in biology, the "hit-and-run" mechanism, which was first proposed decades ago. That is, gene expression is dynamically controlled by a TF that transiently binds and activates a target gene, which might stay in a transcriptionally active state after the initial binding event has ended. Importantly, the experimental procedure introduced, TARGET, provides a useful way for identifying multiple target genes transiently bound by their regulators, which can be used in conjunction with other well-established methods to improve our understanding of transcriptional regulatory dynamics.
authors.affiliation: The Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.|Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand.|Integrative Computational BioScience (ICBS) Center, Mahidol University, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand.
authors.forename: Varodom
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Charoensawan
authors.affiliation: The Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Martinho
authors.affiliation: The Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
authors.forename: Philip A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Wigge
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D001665:Binding Sites; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks; D006801:Humans; D011485:Protein Binding; D012045:Regulatory Sequences, Nucleic Acid; D014157:Transcription Factors / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D014157:Transcription Factors
keywords: Arabidopsis; ChIP-seq; bZIP1; nitrogen; transcription; transcriptome