So proteins bind to DNA or genes all the time. I wanted to know whether before binding with a protein, the gene needs to be activated or not. If there is a research article backing your claim, give the link of that article too.
Dear Rishika,
Regulatory proteins bind to DNA in order to activate or repress genes, not the reverse. Just look up Wikipedia for "electrophoretic mobility shift assay" for details.
Cheers,
Pierre Béguin
As Pierre Béguin mentioned. Genes are regulated through protein binding. For example you can have an active gene that is repressed when a protein binds or an inactive gene that get activated when a protein binds (of course this is an oversimplification as the response of activation and inhibition can be titrated over various levels not to mention the different basal activities of different genes). A good example of this is the tetracycline transactivator which is a synthetic protein consisting of domain that binds to a tet-O sequence and a transcription activation domain. in the presence of tetracycline the the protein will dissociate preventing expression of the gene that is regulated by a tet-o containing promoter, however in the absence of tetracycline the protein will bind allowing expression of said gene. Here is the original paper of the tetracycline transactivator:
Article Transcriptional activation by tetracyclines in mammalian cells
Best regards,
Hanna
It depends what you mean by "activated".
As Pierre said, for transcriptional activation the regulatory protein needs to bind to the DNA first.
However, if by "activation" you mean open, or accessible chromatin, then I guess yes, the chromatin has to be accessible, or "open", or "active" before a transcription factor can bind to the promoter of the gene.
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