Enhancer

Updated by Hongjiang on 09/20/2022

Enhancer is the most important CRE in eukaryotic cells, which acts as binding sites for proteins (activator) in particular gene transcription activation.

It's hard for big-size proteins like TFIID and RNA polymerase II to bind promoters due to the existence of histone, while activators own simple and effective DNA binding sites. Binding like this will "interrupt" local chromosomal structure to expose a promotor or a regulatory site of a gene.

The complex of a enhancer with its activator and co-activator is called Enhanceosome.

TF Which Binds Enhancer

These trans-acting proteins(activator) are refered to as Transcription Fctors(TF), a group of trans-acting factors.