Wednesday, 4 November 2015

molecular biology - What is a cognate enhancer sequence?


What is a cognate enhancer sequence?


While reading a paper (1) presented at a journal class in graduate school, I encountered this sentence:



HIF-1 binds to its cognate enhancer sequence, the hypoxia-responsive element (HRE), and induces the expression of various genes related to the adaptation of cellular metabolism to hypoxia (the switch from oxidative to anoxic respiration),16 escaping from hypoxia (invasion and metastasis of cancer cells),17,18 improvements in hypoxia (angiogenesis)19,20 and the resistance of malignant tumors to chemo as well as radiation therapy.




(1) Is Wikipedia's definition of an enhancer correct for this case? Then does 'cognate' mean "related to, tending to be found together", whereas "sequence" means there's a chain reaction that occurs?


Y Zhu et al, "Involvement of decreased hypoxia-inducible factor 1 activity and resultant G1–S cell cycle transition in radioresistance of perinecrotic tumor cells" Oncogene (2013) 32, 2058–2068




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