酿酒酵母组蛋白乙酰化修饰及其对基因表达的调控

真核生物核小体组蛋白修饰引起染色质重塑(Chromatin remodeling)是表观遗传的重要调控机制.乙酰化修饰(Acetylation modification)是其中一种重要的方式.组蛋白乙酰化修饰位点集中在各种组蛋白N末端赖氨酸残基上.细胞内存在功能拮抗的多种乙酰基转移酶和去乙酰化酶,二者相互竞争,共同调节组蛋白的乙酰化状态,通过影响核小体结构的致密性,并在多种效应分子的参与下,实现对基因的表达调控.以真核模式生物酿酒酵母(Saccharomyces cerevisiae)为对象,综述乙酰基转移酶和去乙酰化酶的种类、作用特点以及其基因调控的分子机制等方面的最新研究进展.

Histone acetylation and its role in the regulation of gene expression in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

In eukaryotes,histone modifications that induce chromatin remodeling are an im-portant mechanism of epigenetic regulation,and acetylation is a crucial form of such modifi-cation.In general,the ε-amino groups of lysine residues of histone N-termini are subject to acetylation,which affects the structure of nucleosome.The acetylation status of histones is controlled by two kinds of functionally antagonistic enzymes,acetyltransferases and deacety-lases,which are responsible for acetylation and deacetylation of histones,respectively.Each enzyme has several homologs in the cell that modify different residues of histones.Further-more,combined with other factors,histone acetylation regulates gene expression at the epige-netic level.In this review,we summarized latest research on the classification of acetyltrans-ferases and deacetylases together with their functional characteristics regarding gene regula-tion in the eukaryotic model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae.