TY - JOUR
T1 - Old cogs, new tricks
T2 - the evolution of gene expression in a chromatin context
AU - Talbert, Paul B.
AU - Meers, Michael P.
AU - Henikoff, Steven
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, Springer Nature Limited.
PY - 2019/5/1
Y1 - 2019/5/1
N2 - Sophisticated gene-regulatory mechanisms probably evolved in prokaryotes billions of years before the emergence of modern eukaryotes, which inherited the same basic enzymatic machineries. However, the epigenomic landscapes of eukaryotes are dominated by nucleosomes, which have acquired roles in genome packaging, mitotic condensation and silencing parasitic genomic elements. Although the molecular mechanisms by which nucleosomes are displaced and modified have been described, just how transcription factors, histone variants and modifications and chromatin regulators act on nucleosomes to regulate transcription is the subject of considerable ongoing study. We explore the extent to which these transcriptional regulatory components function in the context of the evolutionarily ancient role of chromatin as a barrier to processes acting on DNA and how chromatin proteins have diversified to carry out evolutionarily recent functions that accompanied the emergence of differentiation and development in multicellular eukaryotes.
AB - Sophisticated gene-regulatory mechanisms probably evolved in prokaryotes billions of years before the emergence of modern eukaryotes, which inherited the same basic enzymatic machineries. However, the epigenomic landscapes of eukaryotes are dominated by nucleosomes, which have acquired roles in genome packaging, mitotic condensation and silencing parasitic genomic elements. Although the molecular mechanisms by which nucleosomes are displaced and modified have been described, just how transcription factors, histone variants and modifications and chromatin regulators act on nucleosomes to regulate transcription is the subject of considerable ongoing study. We explore the extent to which these transcriptional regulatory components function in the context of the evolutionarily ancient role of chromatin as a barrier to processes acting on DNA and how chromatin proteins have diversified to carry out evolutionarily recent functions that accompanied the emergence of differentiation and development in multicellular eukaryotes.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85064541652&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41576-019-0105-7
DO - 10.1038/s41576-019-0105-7
M3 - Review article
C2 - 30886348
AN - SCOPUS:85064541652
SN - 1471-0056
VL - 20
SP - 283
EP - 297
JO - Nature Reviews Genetics
JF - Nature Reviews Genetics
IS - 5
ER -