Targeting chromatin in fungal pathogens as a novel therapeutic strategy: histone modification gets infectious

摘要

In the early 1950s, at the time of the discovery of the double helix of DNA, the central dogma emerged that genetic information is propagated as DNA and translated into RNA to produce proteins exerting biological functions. However, it has since become clear that histone proteins, which associate with DNA to form the chromatin of eukaryotic cells, can modulate this unidirectional information flow. For instance, post-translational modifications of histones regulate gene-expression programs of numerous cellular processes ranging from cancer biology as well as infectious diseases.