The Dematics of Nucleosomes is Related to Highly Expressed Genes

Researchers from UNIGE and EPFL are trying to figure out the influence of nucleosome dynamics on gene expression and how to control it. According to different stability of nucleosomes, all of the promoters can be divided into two types: One is the unstable nucleosomes with the characteristics of dynamic, the highly expressed genes which participate the process of cell growth and fission; another is stable nucleosomes, the less frequently expressed genes. This study was published on Molecular Cells.

What is nucleosome?Nucleosome is made by DNA and histone, and it is the basic structure unit of the chromosome. The nucleosome is just like a switch in the process of life developing: when specific genes need transcription for constitutions of new proteins, the nucleosomes need to be opened by promoter regions.

What is transcription?The transcription is the process that genetic massage is passed from DNA to RNA. As the first step of protein syntheses, transcription is the synthetic process of message RNA and non coding RNA. It is a key part of information transfer in life. Knowing the relationship between nucleosomes and transcription is meaningful for transcriptomics studies.

Recognizing the movement and recombination of nucleosomes is important. It has an effect on promoters, and indirectly change related gene expressions. This is meaningful for understanding on some disease related mutations, such as tumors. The nucleosomes give an auxiliary understanding on the reason for high gene expressions.

Researchers studied every nucleosome of Yeast gene promoters. They choose this kind of unicellular fungi because parts of their function are just like mammals. Yeasts also have fragile nucleosomes which have no resistance of specific enzymes.

" We have revealed the existence of different types of fragile nucleosomes and two types of promoters." Slawomir Kubik said. Scientists also found that promoters with fragile nucleosomes are closely related to high-level transcription. The dynamic of fragile nucleosomes is important for the transcription of protein promoters. This study is meaningful for us know more about the function of nucleosomes in transcription.

Reference:Fragile Nucleosomes Influence Pol II Promoter:Function Suman K. Pradhan, Yong Xue, Michael F. Careycorrespondenceemail DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.molcel.2015.10.035