Oncology & Cancer

How early-stage cancer cells hide from the immune system

One of the immune system's primary roles is to detect and kill cells that have acquired cancerous mutations. However, some early-stage cancer cells manage to evade this surveillance and develop into more advanced tumors.

Oncology & Cancer

Exposing hiding lymphoma cells to the immune system

A study led by the group of Didier Trono at EPFL has revealed a crucial survival tactic employed by cancer cells. The scientists have identified a group of proteins, known as "KRAB zinc finger proteins" (KZFPs), that help ...

Medical research

How transcription factors influence insulin-producing beta cells

A recent study from the laboratory of Joseph Bass, MD, Ph.D., the Charles F. Kettering Professor of Medicine and chief of Endocrinology in the Department of Medicine, has revealed how transcription factors within individual ...

Oncology & Cancer

Novel regulator of immune evasion in cancer identified

Northwestern Medicine investigators have identified a previously unknown regulator of tumor immune evasion, which may help improve the efficacy of current and future anti-tumor immunotherapies, according to recent findings ...

Oncology & Cancer

Discovery unveils immune system's guardian: Ikaros

In a scientific breakthrough that aids our understanding of the internal wiring of immune cells, researchers at Monash University in Australia have cracked the code behind Ikaros, an essential protein for immune cell development ...

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Transcription factor

In the field of molecular biology, a transcription factor (sometimes called a sequence-specific DNA binding factor) is a protein that binds to specific DNA sequences and thereby controls the transfer (or transcription) of genetic information from DNA to mRNA. Transcription factors perform this function alone or with other proteins in a complex, by promoting (as an activator), or blocking (as a repressor) the recruitment of RNA polymerase (the enzyme which performs the transcription of genetic information from DNA to RNA) to specific genes.

A defining feature of transcription factors is that they contain one or more DNA binding domains (DBDs) which attach to specific sequences of DNA adjacent to the genes that they regulate. Additional proteins such as coactivators, chromatin remodelers, histone acetylases, deacetylases, kinases, and methylases, while also playing crucial roles in gene regulation, lack DNA binding domains, and therefore are not classified as transcription factors.

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