Comparative analysis of expression of histone H2a genes in mouse.docVIP

BMC Genomics BioMedCentral Research article Open Access Comparative analysis of expression of histone H2a genes in mouse Hiromi Nishida*, Takahiro Suzuki, Hiroki Ookawa, Yasuhiro Tomaru and Yoshihide Hayashizaki Address: Laboratory for Genome Exploration Research Group, RIKEN Genomic Sciences Center (GSC), RIKEN Yokohama Institute, 1-7-22 Suehiro-cho, Tsurumi-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 230-0045, Japan Email: Hiromi Nishida* - hnishida@gsc.riken.jp; Takahiro Suzuki - t-suzuki@gsc.riken.jp; Hiroki Ookawa - hokawa@gsc.riken.jp; Yasuhiro Tomaru - tomaru@gsc.riken.jp; Yoshihide Hayashizaki - yosihide@gsc.riken.jp * Corresponding author Published: 13 August 2005 Received: 23 February 2005 Accepted: 13 August 2005 BMC Genomics 2005, 6:108 doi:10.1186/1471-2164-6-108 This article is available from: /1471-2164/6/108 ? 2005 Nishida et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: At least 18 replication-dependent histone H2a genes are distributed in 3 Hist gene clusters on different chromosomes of the mouse genome. In this analysis we designed specific PCR primers for each histone H2a transcript and studied the expression levels and patterns using quantitative RT-PCR (qRT-PCR). In addition, we compared histone H3 K9 acetylation levels in the promoter regions of H2a genes by ChIP (chromatin immunoprecipitation) – quantitative PCR (qPCR) analysis. Results: RT-PCR analysis indicated that all 20 histone H2a genes assessed in this study are expressed. The replication-dependent histone H2a genes have different expression levels but similar expression patterns. Among the 20 histone H2a genes, the expression-level of H2afz, a replication-independent gene, was highest,