Constitutive heterochromatin: a surprising variety of expressed sequences.
The organization of chromosomes into euchromatin and heterochromatin is amongst the most important and enigmatic aspects of genome evolution. Constitutive heterochromatin is a basic yet still poorly understood component of eukaryotic chromosomes, and its molecular characterization by means of standard genomic approaches is intrinsically difficult. Although recent evidence indicates that the presence of transcribed genes in constitutive heterochromatin is a conserved trait that accompanies the evolution of eukaryotic genomes, the term heterochromatin is still considered by many as synonymous of gene silencing. In this paper, we comprehensively review data that provide a clearer picture of transcribed sequences within constitutive heterochromatin, with a special emphasis on Drosophila and humans.
Dimitri
Patrizio
P
Laboratorio di Genomica Funzionale e Proteomica di Sistemi modello and Istituto Pasteur-Fondazione Bolognetti, Dipartimento di Genetica e Biologia Molecolare Charles Darwin, Università La Sapienza, 00185, Italy. patrizio.dimitri@uniroma1.it
Caizzi
Ruggiero
R
Giordano
Ennio
E
Carmela Accardo
Maria
M
Lattanzi
Giovanna
G
Biamonti
Giuseppe
G
D000818:Animals; D002874:Chromosome Mapping; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000235:genetics; D015870:Gene Expression; D006570:Heterochromatin / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D017404:In Situ Hybridization, Fluorescence
D006570:Heterochromatin