New Nature Paper with BMI Contribution Sheds Light on Regulation of the Drosophila genome
Sunday 04/13/2008
“Nucleosome organization in the Drosophila genome”
Dr. Ilya Ioshikhes of OSU BMI is one of the authors on an article that has been accepted for Nature’s Advanced Online Publication. The latest research provides answers to some long-standing questions surrounding nucleosome organization in the Drosophila and other higher organisms, such as: Is there a common theme by which genes of multicellular eukaryotes position their nucleosomes with respect to functional chromosomal elements? What are the functional implications for those themes that are similar or differ across the major eukaryotic lines?
The research and its paper are a product of long-standing collaboration between OSU (Dr. Ioshikhes of BMI) and Penn State University (group headed by Prof. Frank Pugh). In the paper the Penn State researchers were able to produce a genome-wide high-resolution map of modified H2A.Z and bulk nucleosome locations in the embryo of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. It is the first study of that kind for multi-cellular organisms. Dr. Ioshikhes’ role was to examine whether the positions of Drosophila H2A.Z nucleosomes are at least partly hardwired in the genome as defined by the underlying DNA sequence pattern. The pattern appeared to be more consistent with those earlier observed in Human than in lower organisms (worms and yeast).
Visit the Advanced Online Publication section for Nature by clicking here.
Mavrich, T.N., Jiang, C., Ioshikhes, I.P., Li, X., Venters, B.J., Zanton, S.J., Tomsho, L.P., Qi., J., Glaser, R., Schuster, S.C., Gilmour, D.S., Albert, I., and Pugh, B.F. Nucleosome organization in the Drosophila genome. Nature, 2008.