CTCF Polyclonal antibody

Transcriptional insulators are DNA elements that set boundaries on the actions of enhancer and silencer elements and thereby organize the eukaryotic genome into regulatory domains. All vertebrate insulators appear to use the versatile CTCF protein. CTCF uses various combinations of its 11 zinc fingers to recognize a variety of unrelated DNA sequences. Once bound to DNA, CTCF can function as a transcriptional insulator, repressor, or activator, depending on the context of the binding site [PMID:12787766,15454938]. In vertebrates, this 11 zinc-finger protein is shown to be crucial in processes of epigenetic imprinting, X chromosome inactivation , and associated with various complex human diseases including cancer and diabetes [PMID:23139640]. The calcualted molecular weight of CTCF is 83 kDa, but stimulation of human corneal epithelial cells with hypoxic stress suppressed a high molecular mass form of CTCF (150 kDa), but not a lower molecular weight form of CTCF (130 kDa)(PMID: 22354964), and there are multiple isoforms of CTCF with molecular masses of 55, 70, 73, 80, 97, and 130 kDa have been observed (PMID: 12878173).