Laboratory of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
Curr Opin Genet Dev. 2010 Apr;20(2):134-41. doi: 10.1016/j.gde.2010.02.003. Epub 2010 Mar 6.
Expression profiling of eukaryotic genomes has revealed widespread transcription outside the confines of protein-coding genes, leading to production of antisense and non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs). Studies in Schizosaccharomyces pombe and multicellular organisms suggest that transcription and ncRNAs provide a framework for the assembly of heterochromatin, which has been linked to various chromosomal processes. In addition to gene regulation, heterochromatin is crucial for centromere function, cell fate determination as well as transcriptional and posttranscriptional silencing of repetitive DNA elements. Recently, heterochromatin factors have been shown to suppress antisense RNAs at euchromatic loci. These findings define conserved pathways that probably have major impact on the epigenetic regulation of eukaryotic genomes.
真核基因组的表达谱分析揭示了广泛的转录活动超出了蛋白质编码基因的范围，导致了反义 RNA 和非编码 RNA（ncRNA）的产生。在酿酒酵母和多细胞生物中的研究表明，转录和 ncRNA 为异染色质的组装提供了一个框架，异染色质与各种染色体过程有关。除了基因调控外，异染色质对于着丝粒功能、细胞命运决定以及重复 DNA 元件的转录和转录后沉默至关重要。最近，异染色质因子已被证明可以抑制常染色质基因座的反义 RNA。这些发现定义了保守的途径，这些途径可能对真核基因组的表观遗传调控有重大影响。
