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Updated: May 30, 2026

Repressing Gene Transcription by Redirecting Cellular Machinery with Chemical Epigenetic Modifiers
Published on: September 20, 2018
Mechanisms for the inheritance of chromatin states
1Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA. danesh@hms.harvard.edu
Abstract:
Studies in eukaryotes ranging from yeast to mammals indicate that specific chromatin structures can be inherited following DNA replication via mechanisms acting in cis. Both the initial establishment of such chromatin structures and their inheritance require sequence-dependent specificity factors and changes in histone posttranslational modifications. Here I propose models for the maintenance of epigenetic information in which DNA silencers or nascent RNA scaffolds act as sensors that work cooperatively with parentally inherited histones to re-establish chromatin states following DNA replication.
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