Single Locus Controls Majority of Armor Evolution in Two Populations of Sticklebacks 英文参考文献.docVIP

Research Digest Synopses of Research Articles Depositing a Histone That Protects Active Chromosomal Regions from Silencing When James Watson and Francis Crick reported the structure of DNA in 1953, the mechanism of inheritance was instantly apparent.The complementary pairing of the DNA bases in the function depends largely on activating the right gene at the right time, mechanisms have evolved that protect active genes from the intrusions of silencing structures like heterochromatin. SWR1-Com.The largest subunit of this complex, called Swr1p, belongs to a well- known family of adenosine triphosphate (ATP)-dependent chromatin remodeling enzymes (they use the energy of ATP to power remodeling) that provide access to DNA in chromatin. Rine, Madhani, and colleagues show that protein subunits of SWR1-Com associate speci?cally with the histone variant H2A.Z. By comparing the gene expression pro?les of yeast mutants lacking the H2A.Z-encoding gene with mutants lacking the Swr1p-encoding gene, the authors show that H2A.Z depends on the SWR1-Com protein complex to function. Most importantly, they show that SWR1-Com is required in living cells to deposit H2A.Z onto euchromatin. Interestingly, the authors note, SWR1-Com shares subunits with a histone-acetylating enzyme involved in the regulation of transcription (called the NuA4 histone acetyltransferase) and with another chromatin remodeler, which suggests that biochemical modi?cations of the subunits on histone“tails’’may play a role in replacing H2A with H2A.Z. This histone–protein complex, the authors conclude, represents a chromatin remodeling machine with a novel double helix, the pair famously wrote, “immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.’’The structure helped explain one of the central problems of modern biology: how does genetic material get faithfully replicated and then passed on from generation to generation? It was long thought that DNA is the only unit of inheritance. Sinc