Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về y học được đăng trên tạp chí y học Minireview cung cấp cho các bạn kiến thức về ngành y đề tài: Histone H4 lysine 16 acetylation breaks the genome’s silence. | Minireview Histone H4 lysine 16 acetylation breaks the genome s silence Wei-Jong Shia Samantha G Pattenden and Jerry L Workman Addresses Stowers Institute for Medical Research 1000 East 50th Street Kansas City MO 64110 USA. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Pennsylvania State University University Park PA 16802 USA. Correspondence Jerry L Workman. Email JLW@ Published 10 May 2006 Genome Biology 2006 7 217 doi gb-2006-7-5-2l7 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at http 2006 7 5 217 2006 BioMed Central Ltd Abstract Acetylation at histone H4 lysine 16 is involved in many cellular processes in organisms as diverse as yeast and humans. A recent biochemical study pinpoints this particular acetylation mark as a switch for changing chromatin from a repressive to a transcriptionally active state. Eukaryotic DNA is packaged with proteins into substructures that are themselves packed into higher-order 30-nm fibers -the DNA-protein polymer called chromatin. The fundamental repeating unit in chromatin is the nucleosome which consists of 146 bp of DNA wrapped around an octamer of histone proteins 1 . This core octamer contains two histone H2A-H2B dimers and a histone H3-H4 tetramer 1 2 . The compact architecture of chromatin naturally presents a significant barrier to all cellular events that require the underlying DNA and the accessibility of DNA is dynamically regulated through several distinct but not mutually exclusive mechanisms in order for transcription DNA repair replication and recombination to take place 3 . One of the most extensively studied mechanisms for altering chromatin structure is the posttranslational covalent modification of the histone amino-terminal tails. One particular modification histone acetylation has been known to correlate with transcriptional regulation for more than 40 years 4 . Histone acetylation generally makes chromatin accessible to .
