CTCF and Cohesin: Linking Gene Regulatory Elements with Their Targets

Current epigenomics approaches have facilitated the genome-wide identification of regulatory elements based on chromatin features and transcriptional regulator binding and have begun to map long-range interactions between regulatory elements and their targets. Here, we focus on the emerging roles of CTCF and the cohesin in coordinating long-range interactions between regulatory elements. We discuss how species-specific transposable elements may influence such interactions by remodeling the CTCF binding repertoire and suggest that cohesin’s association with enhancers, promoters, and sites defined by CTCF binding has the potential to form developmentally regulated networks of long-range interactions that reflect and promote cell-type-specific transcriptional programs.