Anti Apoptosis-Antagonizing Transcription Factor (AATF) mAb (Clone 1B2D8)

Transcription factors (TFs) directly interpret the genome, performing the first step in decoding the DNA sequence. Many function as ‘‘master regulators’’ and ‘‘selector genes’’, exerting control over processes that specify cell types and developmental patterning (Lee and Young, 2013) and controlling specific pathways such as immune responses (Singh et al., 2014). In the laboratory, TFs can drive cell differentiation (Fong and Tapscott, 2013) and even de-differentiation and trans-differentiation (Takahashi and Yamanaka, 2016). Mutations in TFs and TF-binding sites underlie many human diseases. Their protein sequences, regulatory regions, and physiological roles are often deeply conserved among metazoans (Bejerano et al., 2004; Carroll, 2008), suggesting that global gene regulatory ‘‘networks’’ may be similarly conserved. And yet, there is high turnover in individual regulatory sequences (Weirauch and Hughes, 2010), and over longer timescales, TFs duplicate and diverge. The same TF can regulate different genes in different cell types (e.g., ESR1 in breast and endometrial cell lines [Gertz et al., 2012]), indicating that regulatory networks are dynamic even within the same organism. Determining how TFs are assembled in different ways to recognize binding sites and control transcription is daunting yet paramount to under-standing their physiological roles, decoding specific functional properties of genomes, and mapping how highly specific expression programs are orchestrated in complex organisms. [from: Lambert SA, Jolma A, Campitelli LF, Das PK, Yin Y. (2018) The Human Transcription Factors. Cell. 172:650-665.]

AATF/Che-1/Traube was identified on the basis of its interaction with MAP3K12/DLK, a protein kinase known to be involved in the induction of cell apoptosis. This protein contains an extremely acidic domain and a putative leucine zipper characteristic of transcription factors.

References:
1) Ishigaki et al. (2010) Cell Death Differ. 17:774-786.