Brehm Alexander, Tufteland Katharina R, Aasland Rein, Becker Peter B
Adolf-Butenandt-Institut, Molekularbiologie, München, Germany.
Bioessays. 2004 Feb;26(2):133-40. doi: 10.1002/bies.10392.
Local differences in chromatin organisation may profoundly affect the activity of eukaryotic genomes. Regulation at the level of DNA packaging requires the targeting of structural proteins and histone-modifying enzymes to specific sites and their stable or dynamic interaction with the nucleosomal fiber. The "chromodomain", a domain shared by many regulators of chromatin structure, has long been suspected to serve as a module mediating chromatin interactions in a variety of different protein contexts. However, recent functional analyses of a number of different chromodomains revealed an unexpected diversity of interaction targets, including histones, DNA and even RNA. The chromodomains of today seem to have evolved from a common ancestral fold to fulfill various functions in different molecular contexts. Combining information gained from recent functional and structural studies of chromodomains with a bioinformatic classification of their structure could lead to the definition of sequence motifs with predictive quality for chromodomain function.
染色质组织的局部差异可能会深刻影响真核生物基因组的活性。DNA包装水平的调控需要将结构蛋白和组蛋白修饰酶靶向特定位点，并使其与核小体纤维稳定或动态相互作用。“染色质结构域”是许多染色质结构调节因子共有的结构域，长期以来一直被怀疑作为一个模块在各种不同的蛋白质环境中介导染色质相互作用。然而，最近对许多不同染色质结构域的功能分析揭示了相互作用靶点的意外多样性，包括组蛋白、DNA甚至RNA。如今的染色质结构域似乎是从一个共同的祖先折叠进化而来，以在不同的分子环境中履行各种功能。将从染色质结构域最近的功能和结构研究中获得的信息与其结构的生物信息学分类相结合，可能会导致定义出对染色质结构域功能具有预测性的序列基序。
