engleski

Small molecule approaches to regulation of gene transcription

Regulation of gene expression is fundamental to the processes of cellular differentiation and organismal development. The human genome project has identified approximately 30, 000 protein coding genes in the genome and the regulation of expression of these genes in time and space leads to the complex structure of the human form. How are these genes expressed at the appropriate time and in the appropriate place is a fundamentally important area of study which has yet to be fully defined. Regulation of gene transcription is a primary means of regulating gene expression. Transcription factors, both activators and repressors, are the molecular arbiters regulating gene expression in organisms as diverse as bacteria, yeast and mammals. Aberrant gene transcription plays a role in the onset of many diseases including cancer, neurodegenerative disease and others. In eukaryotes at least, transcriptional regulation involves a complex assembly of activators, repressors, coactivators/corepressors, general transcription factors and RNA polymerases to elicit proper expression of protein coding, tRNA and rRNA genes. In this review we focus on the regulation of protein coding genes by RNA polymerase II and small molecule approaches to regulating this complex process.

transcription ; small molecules

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