ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2012
The chromatin insulator CTCF and the emergence of metazoan diversity.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 103 papers.
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103 citing papers in PubMed, 202 citations in OpenAlex.
- Topological mixing and irreversibility in animal chromosome evolution.Science advances · 2026Article
- Gravity as a Boundary Condition for the Evolution of Three-Dimensional Multicellularity.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Deep conservation of cis-regulatory elements and chromatin organization in echinoderms uncover ancestral regulatory features of animal genomes.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- High-throughputbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Disentangling the architectural and non-architectural functions of CTCF and cohesin in gene regulation.Nature genetics · 2025Article
- The Genomic Kaleidoscope: On the Hidden Dimensions of Within-Species Genomic Diversity.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Review
- High-resolution map of the Plasmodium falciparum genome reveals MORC/ApiAP2-mediated links between distant, functionally related genes.Nature microbiology · 2025Article
- Article
- Cohesin organizes 3D DNA contacts surrounding active enhancers inGenome research · 2025Article
- Hi-GDT: A Hi-C-based 3D gene domain analysis tool for analyzing local chromatin contacts in plants.GigaScience · 2025Article
- Widespread 3D genome reorganization precedes programmed DNA rearrangement inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Inter-chromosomal transcription hubs shape the 3D genome architecture of African trypanosomes.Nature communications · 2024Article
- A negatively charged region within carboxy-terminal domain maintains proper CTCF DNA binding.iScience · 2024Article
- Evolution and function of chromatin domains across the tree of life.Nature structural & molecular biology · 2024Review
- 3D chromatin maps of a brown alga reveal U/V sex chromosome spatial organization.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Cohesin organizes 3D DNA contacts surrounding active enhancers inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Light control of three-dimensional chromatin organization in soybean.Plant biotechnology journal · 2024Article
- The N-terminal dimerization domains of human and Drosophila CTCF have similar functionality.Epigenetics & chromatin · 2024Article
- The impact of DNA methylation on CTCF-mediated 3D genome organization.Nature structural & molecular biology · 2024Review
- Topological structures and syntenic conservation in sea anemone genomes.Nature communications · 2023Article
43 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The great majority of metazoans belong to bilaterian phyla. They diversified during a short interval in Earth's history known as the Cambrian explosion, ~540 million years ago. However, the genetic basis of these events is poorly understood. Here we argue that the vertebrate genome organizer CTCF (CCCTC-binding factor) played an important role for the evolution of bilaterian animals. We provide evidence that the CTCF protein and a genome-wide abundance of CTCF-specific binding motifs are unique to bilaterian phyla, but absent in other eukaryotes. We demonstrate that CTCF-binding sites within vertebrate and Drosophila Hox gene clusters have been maintained for several hundred million years, suggesting an ancient origin of the previously known interaction between Hox gene regulation and CTCF. In addition, a close correlation between the presence of CTCF and Hox gene clusters throughout the animal kingdom suggests conservation of the Hox-CTCF link across the Bilateria. On the basis of these findings, we propose the existence of a Hox-CTCF kernel as principal organizer of bilaterian body plans. Such a kernel could explain (i) the formation of Hox clusters in Bilateria, (ii) the diversity of bilaterian body plans, and (iii) the uniqueness and time of onset of the Cambrian explosion.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.