Background:  The aberrant and altered patterns of gene expression play an important role in the biology of cancer and tumorigenesis. DNA methylation and histone deacetylation are the most studied epigenetic mechanisms. Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACIs) such as valproic acid (VPA) and trichostatin A (TSA) are a group of anticancer compounds for the treatment of solid and hematological canc...

Histone deacetylases (HDACs) induce deacetylation of both histone and non-histone proteins and play a critical role in the modulation of physiological and pathological gene expression. Pharmacological inhibition of HDAC has been reported to attenuate progression of renal fibrogenesis in obstructed kidney and reduce cyst formation in polycystic kidney disease. HDAC inhibitors (HDACis) are also a...

The mating-type region of the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe comprises three loci: mat1, mat2-P and mat3-M. mat1 is expressed and determines the mating type of the cell. mat2-P and mat3-M are two storage cassettes located in a 17 kb heterochromatic region with features identical to those of mammalian heterochromatin. Mutations in the swi6+, clr1+, clr2+, clr3+, clr4+ and clr6+ genes we...

Histone acetylation, regulated by two antagonistic enzymes - histone acetyltransferases (HATs) and histone deacetylases (HDACs) - results in transcriptional changes and also plays a critical role in cardiac development and disease. A new study shows that overexpression of the atypical transcriptional corepressor homeodomain-only protein (Hop) causes cardiac hypertrophy via recruitment of a clas...