Friday, January 29, 2010

Lecture, chapter 10 - Gene regulation in eukaryotes

Today we finished chapter 10, on gene regulation in eukaryotes.

We discussed the role of DNA looping and insulators in ensuring that enhancers have an effect only on associated genes.
Then we discussed how a cell deals with the fact that much of its DNA is found as heterochromatin, making it inaccessible for RNA polymerase, and how DNA must be turned into euchromatin to be able to be expressed... or how euchromatin can be turned into heterochromatin to turn genes off (histone acetylation/deacetylation, DNA methylation/demethylation).

We also introduced the concepts of gene silencing and genetic imprinting

----------------------

No comments: