Topic summary
Regulatory element
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Regulatory sequence.
Enhancer activation and implementation
Enhancers are sequences of the genome that are major gene-regulatory elements. Enhancers control cell-type-specific gene expression programs, most often by looping through long distances to come in physical proximity with the promoters of their target genes. In a study of brain cortical neurons, 24,937 loops were found, bringing enhancers to promoters. Multiple enhancers, each often at tens or hundreds of thousands of nucleotides distant from their target genes, loop to their target gene promoters and coordinate with each other to control expression of their common target gene.