Enhancers are the key agent of transcriptional control that instructs spatiotemporal patterning of gene expression in development. Recent whole-genome studies have identified approximately 400,000 enhancers in the human genome, suggesting that a typical human gene is regulated by ~20 enhancers. While the biological significance of enhancers is becoming increasingly clear in recent years, the basic mechanism of enhancer action has been still largely unclear. Especially, temporal dynamics of enhancer-promoter communication persists as an outstanding mystery in the central dogma. By combining a wide-range of experimental approaches including live-imaging, biochemistry and fly genetics, we aim to elucidate fundamentally new dimension of the molecular mechanism underlying eukaryotic transcription.
