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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Oct 19.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Rev Genet. 2014 Mar 11;15(4):234–246. doi: 10.1038/nrg3663

Figure 2. Regulation of CTCF binding to DNA.

Figure 2

Constitutive CTCF sites present in cells from different tissues are present in non-methylated and nucleosome-free regions. Cell-type specific CTCF binding is partly regulated by differential DNA methylation and nucleosome occupancy across different cell-types. This suggests that cells may use ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling complexes to regulate nucleosome occupancy at specific CTCF sites and control the interaction of this protein with DNA. In addition, the methylation status of cell-type-specific CTCF binding sites may be determined by a combination of activities of de novo methyltransferases and TET enzymes that regulate the presence and levels of 5mC at specific sites. Immortalized cancer cell lines contain high levels of 5mC at CTCF sites, which correlates with the low CTCF occupancy in these cells (Filled red circle: methylated DNA; open circle: unmethylated DNA).