Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 16 January 2004:
Vol. 303. no. 5656, pp. 324 - 325
DOI: 10.1126/science.1093990
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Perspectives

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY:
Breaking the Silence

Tom Owen-Hughes and Michael Bruno

The genome is divided into areas of condensed chromatin (heterochromatin) where genes are transcriptionally silent and regions of accessible chromatin where the majority of actively expressed genes reside. In their Perspective, Owen-Hughes and Bruno discuss new work (Mizugu-chi et al.) that pinpoints the Swr1 ATPase as a crucial player in preventing the spread of silencing. The Swr1 adenosine triphosphatase (ATPase) catalyzes the exchange of H2A/H2B histone dimers in nucleosomes for H2A.Z/H2B dimers. The H2A.Z histone variant incorporated into nucleosomes then acts as a buffer against the spread of silencing.

The authors are in the Division of Gene Regulation and Expression, School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 5EH, UK. E-mail: t.a.owenhughes{at}dundee.ac.uk

Read the Full Text

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)