Armelin-Correa Lucia M, Nagai Maíra H, Leme Silva Artur G, Malnic Bettina
a Department of Biochemistry ; University of São Paulo ; São Paulo , Brazil.
Bioarchitecture. 2014;4(4-5):160-3. doi: 10.4161/19490992.2014.982934.
Odorants are discriminated by hundreds of odorant receptor (OR) genes, which are dispersed throughout the mammalian genome. The OR genes are expressed in a highly specialized type of cell, the olfactory sensory neuron. Each one of these neurons expresses one of the 2 alleles from one single OR gene type. The mechanisms underlying OR gene expression are unclear. Here we describe recent work demonstrating that the olfactory sensory neuron shows a particular nuclear architecture, and that the genomic OR loci are colocalized in silencing heterochromatin compartments within the nucleus. These discoveries highlight the important role played by epigenetic modifications and nuclear genome organization in the regulation of OR gene expression.
气味分子由数百个气味受体(OR)基因进行区分,这些基因分散在整个哺乳动物基因组中。OR基因在一种高度特化的细胞——嗅觉感觉神经元中表达。这些神经元中的每一个都表达来自单一OR基因类型的两个等位基因中的一个。OR基因表达的潜在机制尚不清楚。在这里,我们描述了最近的研究工作,这些工作表明嗅觉感觉神经元呈现出一种特殊的核结构,并且基因组OR基因座共定位于细胞核内的沉默异染色质区室中。这些发现突出了表观遗传修饰和核基因组组织在OR基因表达调控中所起的重要作用。