Transcriptional Silencing of the Yeast Mating-type Genes
Abstract
Self-templating regulation has been proposed to explain the epigenetic pattern of inheritance of repressed transcription in organisms that exhibit heterochromatin-mediated position effects. Position effect refers to a phenomenon in which the expression state of a gene is influenced by its position on a chromosome. First described in Drosophila from adventitious juxtaposition of actively transcribed genes in euchromatic regions with a repressive heterochromatic domain (Henikoff 1990; Wilson et al. 1990), position effect resulting from heterochromatin also functions in many organisms to control regional gene expression in a regulated manner. A striking example is provided by dosage compensation in mammals. Female mammals have two copies of the X chromosome, whereas males have one. To prevent deleterious gene dosage effects, one X chromosome is inactivated in females. This is...
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PDFDOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/0.467-487