The relationship between chromatin structure and transcriptional regulation has been the focus of many research publications over the past few years. A lot of progress has been made in understanding the role of histone modifications. The interdependence of histone methylation and DNA methylation has been revealed. Methylation, acetylation, phosphorylation and ubiquitination of specific histone ...

asthma is a complex, heterogeneous and chronic airway inflammatory disease with different clinical phenotypes caused by diverse triggers and pathophysiological mechanisms. asthma heritability has been established in many genetic studies but it is evident that only genetic elements are not responsible for the development of asthma. increasing rate of asthma incidence during past decades has impl...

Gene expression is regulated by proteins such as transcription factors, as well as by chromatin modifications on DNA and histones. Some histone modifications have been associated to transcriptional activation (i.e. H3K4me1, H3K4me3, H3K9ac, H3K27ac or H3K36me3) whereas others with gene silencing (H3K9me3 and H3K27me3). However, and challenging this premise, we have identified a set of genes in ...

Gliomas are the most frequently occurring primary brain tumors in adults. Although they exist in different malignant stages, including histologically benign forms and highly aggressive states, most gliomas are clinically challenging for neuro-oncologists because of their infiltrative growth patterns and inherent relapse tendency with increased malignancy. Once this disease reaches the glioblast...

Transcription in eukaryotes is associated with two major changes in chromatin organization. Firstly, nucleosomal histones are continuously replaced by new histones, an event that in yeast occurs predominantly at transcriptionally active promoters. Secondly, histones become modified post-translationally at specific lysine residues. Some modifications, including histone H3 trimethylation at lysin...

Nucleosomes are involved in DNA compaction and transcriptional regulation. Yet it is unclear whether histone modification marks are primary or secondary to transcription and whether they interact to form a histone code. We investigated the relationship between transcription and four histone modifications (H4ac, H3ac, H3K4me2/3) using ChIP-chip and expression microarray readouts from two murine ...

Eukaryotic chromatin is subject to multiple posttranslational histone modifications such as acetylation, methylation, phosphorylation, and ubiquitination. These various covalent modifications have been proposed to constitute a "histone code," playing important roles in the establishment of global chromatin environments, transcription, DNA repair, and DNA replication. Among these modifications, ...

In eukaryotic cells, histone lysines are frequently acetylated. However, unlike modifications such as methylations, histone acetylation modifications are often considered redundant. As such, the functional roles of distinct histone acetylations are largely unexplored. We previously developed an algorithm RFECS to discover the most informative modifications associated with the classification or ...