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The Drosophila Eve Insulator Homie Promotes Eve Expression And Protects The Adjacent Gene From Repression By Polycomb Spreading., Miki Fujioka, Guizhi Sun, James B Jaynes

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Faculty Papers

Insulators can block the action of enhancers on promoters and the spreading of repressive chromatin, as well as facilitating specific enhancer-promoter interactions. However, recent studies have called into question whether the activities ascribed to insulators in model transgene assays actually reflect their functions in the genome. The Drosophila even skipped (eve) gene is a Polycomb (Pc) domain with a Pc-group response element (PRE) at one end, flanked by an insulator, an arrangement also seen in other genes. Here, we show that this insulator has three major functions. It blocks the spreading of the eve Pc domain, preventing repression of the …