大范围基因表达抑制机理的生物信息学研究概况

Toward understanding bioin for matics research of genome-wide transcriptional repression mechanism

大范围基因表达调控的机制研究是目前功能基因组学研究的一个重要课题 ,所以也是功能生物信息学研究的热点。基因表达的两个方面即激活 (activation)和抑制 (repression)是同等重要的 ,但是长期以来在基因激活方面积累的知识远比抑制要多。越来越多的理和实验研究表明 ,激活和抑制应该是同一问题的相互依存的两个方面。基因抑制从形式上可以分成主动抑制和被动抑制 ,近程抑制和远程抑制等 ,但是其分子基础是抑制转录机器复合物 (transcriptionalmachinery)或形成抑制性在染色体结构如异染色质等。本文对几种基因抑制机制进行了初步的总结 ,指出基因抑制相关研究的重要性 ,而要弄清在基因组大范围内如何实现激活和抑制的有机调控包括在基因激活和抑制快速相互转换的动态过程中染色体结构变化的机制 。

It is important to know the mechanisms of gene repression in the genome wide.From theoretical and technological view,gene repression should be equally important as gene activation.One of the reasons is,many genes are functionally clustered into groups and even mechanically connected in expression control.So it not feasible to specifically change the expression of a single gene until the activation/repression mechanisms of its related genes are understood.By now knowledge on gene activation has been accumulated much more than on gene repression,but the apparent importance of repression drives a lot of genome-wide experimentaal and bioinformatics studies to follow soon.There are repression mechanisms like passive and active repressions.short-distance or long-distance repressions,the molecular basis of which is either inhibition of the activity of general transcriptional machinery,or formation of repressive chromatin structures.The genome-wide interactive regulation on activation,repression and dynamic equilibrium between them,especially how the chromosome ultra-structure quickly transform still need plenty of investigations.