Will the transcription control elements in chromatin please stand up?

摘要

What's a transcription control element? What's a gene? These issues, which many thought were well on their way to being understood, are now wide open again with the increasing demonstration of transcripts, including tissue-specific ones, from newly discovered noncoding RNA genes (transcribed but with no translation), previously undocumented protein-encoding genes and an increasing variety of transcription start sites and splice sites for annotated genes. These issues were approached in the article by Boyle et al., the first comprehensive high-resolution DNasel-hypersensitivity analysis of the human genome with genome wide comparison to other epigenetic features. DNasel hypersensitive sites (DHS), which are associated with nucleosome-free subregions of chromatin, are one of the hallmarks of active or potentially active genes.