Critical Reviews™ in Eukaryotic Gene Expression

ISSN for PRINT: 1045-4403

For Online Access

Best Paper Award Selection - Editorial Board Site

2001, Volume11

Issue 1-3

271 pages

Issue price - $507.00

Sergey V. Razin
Laboratory of Structural and Functional Organization of hromosomes, Institute of Gene Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vavilov Str. 34/5, 117334 Moscow, Russia

Felix Recillas-Targa
Instituto de Fisiologia Celular, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Departamento de Genetica Molecular, Apartado Postal 70-242, Mexico D.F. 04510, Mexico

Chicken domains of a- and b-globin genes constitute traditional models to study possible relationships between the structural and functional organization of the eukaryotic genome. Recent evidence indicates that these two genomic domains differ significantly in genomic organization as well as in their mode of packaging into chromatin. In this review, we present a comparative analysis of the chicken a- and b-globin gene clusters. The data are discussed in terms of the “domain hypothesis of the eukaryotic genome organization.” On the basis of the results of our analysis, we present arguments for the existence of three distinct mechanisms that corroborate in the activation/repression of genomic domains. These mechanisms are (1) the relocation of genomic domains into nuclear compartments, (2) the long-term modifications of the mode of chromatin packaging within domains, and (3) the domain activation by continuous action of multiple transcription factors and remodeling complexes.

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