GENE SILENCING PART II 

Minerva Biotecnologica 2008 June;20(2):85-8

Copyright © 2008 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Gene silencing in the study of transcriptional regulation: the AbH-J-J locus

Finotti A. ¹, Breveglieri G. ², Gkritzapi S. ¹, Gambari R. ¹, Feriotto G. ¹

¹ Section of Molecular Biology Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy 2 Laboratory for the Development of Pharmacological and Pharmacogenomic Therapy of Thalassemia Biotechnology Centre University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy

The starting point to explain how the main biological processes occur is the understanding of the mechanisms which control the gene expression regulation. One of the mechanisms of transcriptional regulation is operating at the promoter level. In this context, the identification and characterization of transcription factors involved on promoter binding and regulation appears to be very important. Silencing strategies are useful methods to study the function of transcription factors (TFs) as promoter regulators, and they include: 1) decoy and 2) RNA interference (RNAi) approaches. This article describes a successful application of these two methods in the study of transcriptional regulation of human AbH-J-J locus. Transcription factor decoy (TFD) approach was employed in order to determine the role of Sp1-related proteins; RNAi approach for upstream stimulatory transcription factor (USF) depletion was used to study the role of this factor on P1 promoter directed expression.