Dr. Henikoff discusses the next phase in gene regulation research, establishing causality in the gene expression flow and who the key players are.
Looking Under the Hood of Gene Regulation
The field in general I think has changed,so in just a few years, I think what we’ve seen is that there is much more gettingdown to nitty gritty, what’s underneath the hood, as opposed to the chrome on the top. And that comes through when we begin to understand what the relationship is between starting from a transcription factor causing expressionof a gene, basically causing RNA polymerase to move and what’s the interaction between RNA polymerase and nucleosomes, how that leads to histone modifications, how the histone modifications can help stabilize, for example, the nucleosomes.
So these are the questions that we’re sort of beating around the bush and about a couple of years ago, but now I think we’re beginning to understand how it all happens and what the chain of causality is, for example. And also, not just withthe players are but what the interactions are and how it actually works dynamically.
So we’d like to think of chromatin in terms of a map, let’s say. But now our particular interest is, OK, so what’s the dynamics? What if you can put the timescale on it? And what I’ve been hearing at this meeting is I think that the timescale is beginning to come through by understanding the processes.