Drosophila melanogaster embryos undergo a dramatic genomic transformation in the hour preceding gastrulation, as thousands of promoters and regulatory regions become biochemically distinct before they become active.

Pervasive ‘futile cycling’ by chromatin-modifying factors suggests a mechanism for creating new links in gene regulatory networks.

Silencing of gene regulatory elements by modifications of DNA-bound proteins promotes the progression of early mouse development.

TALE transcription factors bind different genomic motifs and function together with different protein partners at different stages of zebrafish embryogenesis.

Transcription factors of the ETS family govern a cohort of key cancer-associated regulators of malignancy in squamous cell carcinomas.

GLI3 represses Hedgehog target gene expression by regulating histone modifications at a subset of tissue-specific GLI-bound enhancers.

Sox2 transcription is not correlated with spatial proximity of its essential regulatory enhancer in embryonic stem cells, suggesting gene transcription is not limited to periods of direct enhancer-promoter contact.

Human and chimpanzee-induced pluripotent stem cells show limited species-specificity in transposable element silencing.

Analysis of epigenome maps from human pancreatic progenitors and functional validation in zebrafish identify LAMA1 and CRB2 as type 2 diabetes risk-associated genes with roles in pancreatic development.

In a synthetic system, spreading of chromatin-mediated silencing to nearby genes depends on distance and can bypass genetic insulators, while reactivation after release of gene targeting is coordinated by insulators and promoters.