How context-specific factors control gene activity
Originally published by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne on September 9, 2024 Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Every cell in our body contains the same DNA , yet liver cells are different from brain cells , and skin cells differ from muscle cells . What determines these differences? It all comes down to gene regulation ; essentially how and when genes are turned on and off to meet the cell's demands. But gene regulation is quite complex , especially because it is itself regulated by other parts of DNA . There are t wo important components that control gene regulation : the first are enhancers , which are short bits of DNA that increase the likelihood that a gene will be activated—even if that gene is far away from the enhancer on the genome. The second are specialized proteins , generally referred to as " transcription factors " ( TFs ), which bind to enhancers and, put crudely, control gene expression by "flipping" the genes' on/off swit