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Inhibition of 5S RNA transcription in vitro by nucleosome cores with low or high levels of histone acetylation
Author(s) -
Roberge Michel,
O'Neill Timothy E.,
Bradbury E.Morton
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/0014-5793(91)81037-9
Subject(s) - nucleosome , histone , histone methylation , transcription (linguistics) , acetylation , microbiology and biotechnology , biology , chemistry , dna , gene expression , biochemistry , gene , dna methylation , linguistics , philosophy
Nucleosomes exert strong inhibitory effects on gene transcription in vitro and in vivo. Since most DNA is packaged in nucleosomes, there must exist mechanisms to alleviate this inhibition during gene activation. Nucleosomes could be destabilized by histone acetylation which is strongly correlated with gene expression. We have compared the effects of nucleosomes cores with low or high levels of histone acetylation on 5S RNA transcription with Xenopus nuclear extracts in vitro. Little or no difference was observed over a range of 1 to 15 nucleosome cores per plasmid template. This result suggests that nucleosomal DNA is not more accessible to transcription factors and to the transcription machinery in acetylated nucleosomes.