Our functional characterization of transcription factors is published in Nature [1].
Transcriptional enhancers are crucial regulators of gene expression. While most of the current research focuses on studying the genome-wide binding of transcription factors (TFs) to DNA, a systematic characterization of TF function is still missing. Even such basic properties as if a given TF acts as an activator or a repressor is not known for many TFs. We developed an enhancer complementation assay that allows testing of regulatory activities in different contexts.
Our results of testing 474 TFs and 338 transcriptional cofactors in Drosophila S2 cells are available from factors.starklab.org.
[1] Stampfel G, Kazmar T, Frank O, Wienerroither S, Reiter F, Stark A. Transcriptional regulators form diverse groups with context-dependent regulatory functions. Nature, 2015.