Mechanisms of action of transcription activation and repression domains

Transcriptional regulators contain domains that either activate or repress transcription. Indeed, many cellular transcriptional regulators contain both activation and repression domains. Transcriptional regulators act at several stages in the transcription process, including assembly of the transcription complex, initiation and elongation. In order to influence these processes, the regulatory domains must interact with components of the transcription apparatus. This review will focus on our current understanding of the nature of transcriptional regulatory domains and their targets in the transcription machinery.