Histones and their modifications play a critical role in transcriptional silencing in yeast

The heritable features of an organism are determined not only by the contents of gene and also heavily depended on the way they expressed.
The researchers from University of California, USA have demonstrated evidences to show the important role of histones and their mutations in regulation of gene expressing. The researchers experiment indicated that the modifications of both the core area of nucleosomes and amino termini of histone H3 and H4 have strong impact to gene silencing. These mutations could enhance gene silencing at telomeres and increase the proporation of cells in which telomeres and mating-type loci are in the silent state.
This result may have an impact on research in the area of epigenetic regulation of gene expressing and genetic cancer therapy.

Selected by: Brian Xing

Title of paper: Mutations in the Nucleosome Core Enhance Transcriptional Silencing†