Chromatin insulators are factors involved in higher-order, genome-wide organization of chromatin, and play key roles in regulating transcriptional programs. In this review, we discuss recent studies on the diverse composition of insulator complexes, and on the mechanism by which they establish long-range DNA interactions. Particularly, we describe new biophysical methods that allow for the study of the composition of large molecular complexes, and for defining the factors potentially required to establish long-range DNA contacts.
Keywords: chromatin insulators; chromatin organization; fluorescence correlation spectroscopy; single-molecule; transcription regulation.