A new view of epigenetic control:
Well I was just saying that epigenetic control is always more complicated than I think. But there’s news of some kind of simplifying description. (Albert J. Keung and Ahmad Sl Khalil, A Unifying Model of Epigenetic Regulation Science vol. 351 no. 6274 February 12, 2016 page 661 and L. Bintu et al. Dynamics of Epigenetic Regulation at the Single-Cell Level page 720 in the same issue) What they have done is look – at the single cell level – at gene silencing and found two sorts:
There is slow onset, permanent silencing by DNA methylation, and rapid onset rapid but reversible silencing of genes by histone deacetylase.
I’m thinking there’s more to it than that, but this is very good progress. I can use it. Hold that place.
But wait; there’s more. There are bits of DNA called retrotransposons which also regulate genes, but that’s on an evolutionary time scale. (R. Elbarbary, et al., Retrotransposons as Regulators of Gene Expression page 679 in the same issue again.)
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