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HEREDITAS ›› 2010, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (8): 799-807.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1005.2010.00799

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Research progress on genomic integrity regulated by epigenetics us-ing yeast as a model

FENG Bi-Wei, CHEN Jian-Qiang, LEI Bing-Kun, PAN Xian, LÜ Hong   

  1. State Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering, Institute of Genetics, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China
  • Received:2009-10-31 Revised:2010-06-28 Online:2010-08-20 Published:2010-08-23
  • Contact: Lv Hong E-mail:honglv@fudan.edu.cn

Abstract: Genomic integrity is crucial for normal cell replication, proliferation and differentiation. DNA lesions resulted from exogenous and endogenous factors will lead to genomic instability, and consequently the cause for various diseases. Epigenetic regulation (including DNA methylation, histone modifications and non-coding RNA) plays important roles in DNA lesion repair and cell cycle regulation as well as maintaining the genetic integrity. The yeast, a type of single cell eu-karyotic organism, is an ideal model for the researches of epigenetics, especially in the area of DNA lesion repair and the formation of heterochromatin. Previous researches on epigenetics were mainly focus on histone modifications. Recent re-searches have observed that non-coding RNAs are able to direct the cytosine methylation and histone modifications that are related to gene expression regulation. This paper discuss the mechanism, research progress and future development of epi-genetics in maintaining the genomic integrity, using the yeast as a model.

Key words: yeast, epigenetic regulation, genomic integrity, histone modification, RNA interference