Regulation of Gene Expression I Flashcards
What are the 2 major modifications that dictate if a region of a chromosome is active vs inactive?
DNA methylation
Histone modification
Where is DNA methylated?
5-methyl cystosine
What is chromatin composed of?
DNA plus all the associated proteins stuck on it
What is a histone?
Core of nucleosomes, with DNA wrapped around it
in eukaryotes, most genes are ___.
Silenced
What are the characteristics of the DNA and histones in heterchromatin?
DNA is hypermethylated at CpG dinucleotides
Histones are deacetylated
What are the characteristics of the DNA and histones of euchromatin?
DNA is hypomethylated
Histones are acetylated
Which is being actively transcribed, heterochromatin or euchromatin?
Euchromatin
What do histone acetyl transferases (HATs) do?
Unwind DNA to promote transcription
What do histone deacetylases (HDACs) do?
Reverse HATs and form nucleosomes
When chromatin relaxes, what results?
Hypersensitivity to DNase treatment
What does epigenetic mean?
Changes in phenotype without changes in genotype - Genes are the same, but only some are active in certain tissues
What is the gene silencing mechanism?
DNA methylation
What is the gene activation mechanism?
Histone acetylation
What are the 2 epigenetic modification activating marks that we need to know?
Histone acetylation of H3 and H4
Unmethylated CpG
What are the 2 epigenetic modification silencing marks that we need to know?
Histone deacetylation at H3 and H4
Methylated CpG
DNA methylation = ?
Gene silencing
CpG pairs have been lost from the genome over time except in ___.
Euchromatin