Niakan's group focused on a gene called OCT4 (also known as POU5F1), a master
regulator of gene activity, which is important in mouse embryo development.
Because the prion - forming protein identified in the study normally functions as
a regulator of gene activity, the researchers say their discovery raises the possibility that when it switches to a prion state, it could alter genetic expression and bacterial behavior.
The team found that humans are equipped with tiny differences in a particular
regulator of gene activity, dubbed HARE5, that when introduced into a mouse embryo, led to a 12 % bigger brain than in the embryos treated with the HARE5 sequence from chimpanzees.
Not exact matches
Igoshin said that when the researchers set out to find how sporulation decisions were timed to the cell cycle, several studies including prior work by team members, provided a significant clue: Under starvation conditions, the
activity of the master
regulator gene had been shown to spike once per cell cycle.
«This tells us that the NuRD complex is very influential — not only does it affect the
activity of genes directly, it also controls other
regulators of multiple
genes,» Bonni said.
Researchers also found that levels
of cAMP and pCREB, possible upstream
regulators of some circadian
genes, were correlated with locomotor
activity.
Tet2 is a type
of cellular enzyme known as an epigenetic
regulator — responsible for making specific chemical annotations to regions
of DNA that alter the
activity of many different
genes.
The researchers found that the ability to control
gene activity allows Ikaros to act as a master
regulator of the function
of blood cells.
Gene ontology (GO) analysis
of genes within 250 kb
of a PORE sequence revealed enrichment in processes such as transcription
regulator activity (p < 0.001), sex determination (p < 0.005), insulin receptor signaling (p < 0.001), development (p < 0.0005), and protein phosphorylation (p < 0.005).
Chromatin folding is increasingly recognized as a
regulator of genomic processes such as
gene activity.