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【bio-news】绘制基因组开关图谱 自选
Genome on-off switches mapped
IF YOU thought that knowing an organism’s genome sequence meant that the hard work wasover, think again. To make sense of the genome we need to know where and when the genes areswitched on.For the cress Arabidopsisthaliana – the lab rat of the plantworld – this goal is now a stepcloser. Adding methyl groupsto DNA is one way of switchinggenes on or off, and thedistribution of methyl groupsacross the plant’s entire genomehas just been mapped.To show which genes areexpressed, Steve Jacobsen at theUniversity of California, LosAngeles, and colleagues stuck theplant’s entire genome onto a DNAmicroarray chip. They found thatthousands of the 26,000 or soArabidopsis genes are regulatedby methylation – up from themere handful known previously.
“This work will let researchersidentify methylation on any geneof interest, which will aid in theunderstanding of generegulation,” Jacobsen says. Withsome modification, he says, thetechnique should be applicableto the human genome. The workwill be published in Cell.
如果你认为获知生物基因序列意味着最艰难工作的结束，那你就需要重新考虑了。为了更好的了解基因组，我们需要知道何时何地哪些基因开通。对于实验室植物世界的小鼠－水芹Arabidopsis thaliana－这个目标已有一些进展。DNA 甲基化是基因开关的一个方法，而对这个植物整个基因组甲基化的分布图谱已经绘制完成。
为了显示哪个基因表达，Los Angeles，加利福尼亚大学的Steve Jacobsen和他的同事，讲水芹的整个基因组粘到DNA 微点阵芯片上。他们发现水芹Arabidopsis26，000左右个基因中数千基因受到甲基化调控，远高于以前已知的少数基因。
“这个工作将使研究人员鉴定任何感兴趣基因的甲基化，从而帮助了解基因的调节，”Jacobsen说道，这项技术将可应用于人类基因组。这项工作将发表在Cell杂志。 [标签:content1][标签:content2]
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作者:admin@医学,生命科学 2011-02-11 05:14
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