Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
2822611 | Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics | 2012 | 8 Pages |
Abstract
Histone H3 lysine 4 trimethylation (H3K4me3) is well known to occur in the promoter region of genes for transcription activation. However, when investigating the H3K4me3 profiles in the mouse cerebrum and testis, we discovered that H3K4me3 also has a significant enrichment at the 3â² end of actively transcribed (sense) genes, named as 3â²-H3K4me3. 3â²-H3K4me3 is associated with â¼15% of protein-coding genes in both tissues. In addition, we examined the transcriptional initiation signals including RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) binding sites and 5â²-CAGE-tag that marks transcriptional start sites. Interestingly, we found that 3â²-H3K4me3 is associated with the initiation of antisense transcription. Furthermore, 3â²-H3K4me3 modification levels correlate positively with the antisense expression levels of the associated sense genes, implying that 3â²-H3K4me3 is involved in the activation of antisense transcription. Taken together, our findings suggest that H3K4me3 may be involved in the regulation of antisense transcription that initiates from the 3â² end of sense genes. In addition, a positive correlation was also observed between the expression of antisense and the associated sense genes with 3â²-H3K4me3 modification. More importantly, we observed the 3â²-H3K4me3 enrichment among genes in human, fruitfly and Arabidopsis, and found that the sequences of 3â²-H3K4me3-marked regions are highly conserved and essentially indistinguishable from known promoters in vertebrate. Therefore, we speculate that these 3â²-H3K4me3-marked regions may serve as potential promoters for antisense transcription and 3â²-H3K4me3 appear to be a universal epigenetic feature in eukaryotes. Our results provide a novel insight into the epigenetic roles of H3K4me3 and the regulatory mechanism of antisense transcription.
Keywords
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Authors
Peng Cui, Wanfei Liu, Yuhui Zhao, Qiang Lin, Feng Ding, Chengqi Xin, Jianing Geng, Shuhui Song, Fanglin Sun, Songnian Hu, Jun Yu,