Transcriptional Co-Repressors

Transcriptional co-repressors are factors that inhibit the initiation of transcription. Transcriptional repression by co-repressors is carried out primarily by preventing the binding of transcriptional co-activators to transcription factors and/or recruiting chromatin modifying enzymes that either promote or directly catalyze the addition of repressive post-translational marks onto histones and DNA. These repressive marks (most commonly methylation), in turn, block the binding of transcriptional co-activators and/or recruit the binding of other transcriptional co-repressors.