Plant development results from specific patterns of gene expression that are tightly regulated in a spatio-temporal manner. Chromatin remodeling plays a central role in establishing these expression patterns and maintaining epigenetic transcriptional states through successive rounds of mitosis that take place within a cell lineage. Plant epigenetic switches occur not only at the embryo stage, b...

Extensive studies in the past few years have begun to demonstrate that chromosome structure plays a critical role in transcriptional regulation. Two highly conserved mechanisms for altering chromosome structure have been identified: 1) post-translational modification of histones and 2) adenosine triphosphate (ATP)-dependent chromosome remodeling. Acetylation of histone lysine residues has been ...

Transcriptional regulation in yeast involves a number of general trans-acting factors affecting chromatin structure. The Swi-Snf complex is required for expression of a large number of genes and has the ability to remodel chromatin in vitro. The Ssn6p-Tup1p repressor complex may be involved in chromatin organization through the interaction with pathway-specific DNA-binding proteins. To study th...

Subtelomeres are patchworks of evolutionary conserved sequence blocks and harbor the transcriptional start sites for telomere repeat containing RNAs (TERRA). Recent studies suggest that the interplay between telomeres and subtelomeric chromatin is required for maintaining telomere function. To further characterize chromatin remodeling of subtelomeres in relation to telomere shortening and cellu...

In many multicellular organisms, males have one X chromosome and females have two. Dosage compensation refers to a regulatory mechanism that insures the equalization of X-linked gene products in males and females. The mechanism has been studied at the molecular level in model organisms belonging to three distantly related taxa; in these organisms, equalization is achieved by shutting down one o...

We use affinity purification of the double bromodomain protein Brd2 to isolate a multicomponent nuclear complex from cultured cells, and apply mass spectrometry/proteomics methods to identify the participants. We then confirm by immunoblot several transcription co-activators and co-repressors, proteins of the Swi/Snf chromatin remodeling complex, which regulate transcription control of cyclin A...

Pontin is a chromatin remodeling factor that possesses both ATPase and DNA helicase activities. Although Pontin is frequently overexpressed in human cancers of various types and implicated in oncogenic functions, the upstream signaling network leading to the regulation of Pontin that in turn affects transcription of downstream target genes has not been extensively studied. Here, we identify Pon...