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Gene regulation

Local or global?

Nature volume 408, pages 412–415 (2000)Cite this article

Modifications to histone proteins were thought to act only locally to control the expression of single genes. But the finding of such changes across the whole genome brings that view into question.

The US congressman Thomas 'Tip' O'Neill once famously said: “All politics is local”. In the same vein, environmental groups have adopted the slogan “Think globally, act locally”. In biology, a similar sentiment is thought to be relevant to gene expression. Here, it is held that changes in the structure of chromatin — a compact, compressed form of DNA — occur only 'locally', allowing the regulation of individual genes. But it seems that this picture is too simplistic, for, on page 495 of this issue1, Vogelauer and colleagues describe their discovery of genome-wide, 'global' chromatin modifications. The functions of these modifications remain something of a mystery.

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Figure 1: A commonly held view of gene regulation.
Figure 2: Processes that might be regulated by the base level of histone acetylation discovered by Vogelauer et al.1 throughout the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome.

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  1. Molecular Genetics Program, The Wistar Institute, 3601 Spruce Street, Philadelphia , 19104, Pennsylvania, USA

    Shelley L. Berger

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  1. Shelley L. Berger
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Correspondence to Shelley L. Berger.

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Berger, S. Local or global?. Nature 408, 412–415 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35044160

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