The hippocampus is a brain region that is particularly susceptible to structural and functional changes in response to chronic stress. Recent literature has focused on changes in gene transcription mediated by post-translational modifications of histones in response to stressful stimuli. Chronic variable stress (CVS) is a rodent model that mimics certain symptoms of depression in humans. Given ...

MOTIVATION In eukaryotic genomes, histone acetylation and thereafter departure from the chromatin are essential for gene transcription initiation. Because gene transcription is tightly regulated by transcription factors, there are some speculations on the cooperation of histone acetylation and transcription factor binding. However, systematic statistical analyses of this relationship on a genom...

Global genome nucleotide excision repair removes DNA damage from transcriptionally silent regions of the genome. Relatively little is known about the molecular events that initiate and regulate this process in the context of chromatin. We've shown that, in response to UV radiation-induced DNA damage, increased histone H3 acetylation at lysine 9 and 14 correlates with changes in chromatin struct...

We describe the genome-wide distributions and temporal dynamics of nucleosomes and post-translational histone modifications throughout the maternal-to-zygotic transition in embryos of Drosophila melanogaster. At mitotic cycle 8, when few zygotic genes are being transcribed, embryonic chromatin is in a relatively simple state: there are few nucleosome free regions, undetectable levels of the his...

Shear stress (SS), the tangential component of hemodynamic forces, modulates the expression of several genes in endothelial cells. However, no information is available about its effect on chromatin structure, which plays a key role in gene transcription. In this study, a link between SS and chromatin remodeling was established in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs). HUVECs were expo...

In eukaryotic cells, histone acetylation and deacetylation play an important role in the regulation of gene expression. Histone acetylation levels are modulated by histone acetyltransferases and histone deacetylases (HDACs). Recent studies indicate that HDACs play essential roles in the regulation of gene expression in plant response to environmental stress. In this review, we discussed the rec...

Histone acetylation has recently been implicated in learning and memory processes, yet necessity of histone acetylation for such processes has not been demonstrated using pharmacological inhibitors of histone acetyltransferases (HATs). As such, the present study tested whether garcinol, a potent HAT inhibitor in vitro, could impair hippocampal memory consolidation and block the memory-enhancing...

Acetylation on the tails of histones plays an important role in controlling transcription initiation. Although the steady-state abundances of histone acetyl groups have been reported, the rate at which histones are acetylated and deacetylated on a residue-specific basis has not been quantitatively established. We added [(13)C]glucose to human cells and monitored the dynamic incorporation of (13...

Increasing survival motor neuron 2 (SMN2) gene expression may be an effective strategy for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). Histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors have been shown to increase SMN transcript and protein levels, but the specific role of histone acetylation in regulating SMN gene expression has not been explored. Using chromatin immunopreciptation, we investigated the...