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Science 31 October 2003:
Vol. 302. no. 5646, pp. 793 - 795
DOI: 10.1126/science.1091762
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Perspectives

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY:
MeCP2 Repression Goes Nonglobal

Robert Klose and Adrian Bird

Methylation of CpG islands in gene promoters results in silencing of those genes. Mutation of a methyl-CpG binding domain protein called MeCP2 that contributes to the maintenance of methylation-mediated gene silencing is associated with a severe neurological disease called Rett syndrome. As Klose and Bird report in their Perspective, new work published here (Chen et al., Martinowich et al.) and elsewhere demonstrates that MeCP2 normally represses the expression of two genes-BDNF in rat and Hairy2a in frog-that are crucial for normal development of the nervous system.

The authors are at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology, University of Edinburgh, The King's Buildings, Edinburgh EH9 3JR, UK. E-mail: a.bird{at}ed.ac.uk

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