Polycomb Targets Seek Closest Neighbours

Polycomb Targets Seek Closest Neighbours

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Mita Chotalia, Ana Pombo*

Genome Function Group, MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, Imperial College School of Medicine, Hammersmith Hospital Campus, London, United Kingdom

Citation: Chotalia M, Pombo A (2011) Polycomb Targets Seek Closest Neighbours. PLoS Genet 7(3): e1002031. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1002031

Editor: Wendy A. Bickmore, Medical Research Council Human Genetics Unit, United Kingdom

Published: March 24, 2011

Copyright: © 2011 Chotalia, Pombo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this article.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

* E-mail: ana.pombo@csc.mrc.ac.uk

Eukaryotic chromosomes occupy discrete territories with preferred positions within the cell nucleus, and establish extensive intra- and inter-chromosomal interactions. The mechanisms underlying chromatin interactions and their roles in gene activity and cellular function remain unclear. Nor is it clear to what extent individual loci are free to explore the entire nuclear space, or are constrained by their genomic context. At the local level, interactions between distant enhancer and promoter sequences, detected by 3C (chromosome conformation capture) technologies, have suggested a multi-step mechanism of gene regulation, involving protein binding to enhancer sequences followed by long-range chromatin contacts and activation of the target gene [1], [2]. Long-range interactions have also been described amongst distant, actively transcribed genes, which co-localise at transcription factories. However, long-range interactions are not only limited to events associated with gene activation, but also to those associated with gene repression, including for target genes of Polycomb group (PcG) proteins.