Alexander A. Vostrov

TL;DR: It is shown here that erasure of methylation marks during male germ-line development is associated with dramatic up- regulation of BORIS and down-regulation of CTCF expression, and BORis is a candidate protein for the elusive epigenetic reprogramming factor acting in the male germ line.

TL;DR: More than 200 new CTCF target sites are identified by generating DNA microarrays of clones derived from chromatin-immunopurified (ChIP) DNA followed by ChIP-on-chip hybridization analysis and it is shown that the majority of these targets manifest insulator functions with a continuous distribution of stringency.

TL;DR: Coordinated, epigenetic unmasking of multiple genes with growth promoting activity occurs in aerodigestive cancers, and BORIS is implicated in the coordinated promoter demethylation and reactivation of epigenetically silenced genes in human cancers.

TL;DR: It is shown that mouse and human Xist/XIST promoters contain one homologous CTCF-binding sequence with the matching dG-contacts, which in the human XIST include the -43 position within the DNase I footprint of C TCF, a conserved protein with a 11 Zn-finger (ZF) domain that can mediate multiple sequence-specificity and interactions between DNA-bound CTCf molecules.

TL;DR: Exogenous BORIS expression in normal BORis-negative cells was sufficient to allow hTERT transcription in normal cells and to counteract the inhibitory effect of CTCF in testicular and ovarian tumor cells, defining an important contribution of B ORIS to immortalization during tumorigenesis.