Collective interactions dominate gene regulation in eukaryotes

‘What is true for E. coli is true for the elephant’, Nobel laureate Jacques Monod wrote in 1954. It seems now that the appropriate response might be that famously offered, in lieu of contradiction, by an obsequious newspaper editor to his proprietor in Evelyn Waugh’s satire Scoop: ‘Up to a point, Lord Copper.’ Monod won his Nobel with François Jacob for elucidating the molecular mechanism of gene regulation – how transcription of genes is turned on and off – in E. coli. And for sure, gene regulation happens in elephants too. But the molecular principles governing this process in complex eukaryotes like elephants and us turn out to be rather different to those for bacteria.