You have been analyzing a gene that is expressed in normal breast epithelial cel

Question

You have been analyzing a gene that is expressed in normal breast epithelial cells. You have recently realized that the gene is not expressed in some breast tumor cells (no mRNA is found in RT-PCR test). So you sequence the entire gene ( and thr rest of the chromosome also) and you don't find any changes in the DNA sequence. Give one distinct cellular mechanism that involves another protein and could lead to the the loss of gene expression in the absence of any changes in the DNA sequence. Please, give explanation to your answer

Explanation / Answer

This phenomena is called epigenetics. It may cause changes in the gene expression patterns without actual change in the DNA sequence itself. The deacetylation of Histone tails in some of the breast tumor cells will prevent the transcription machinery from accessing the promoter and thus will prevent gene expression. This deacetylation is caused by a class of enzymes called Histone Deacetylases (HDACs) which are epigenetically regulated.

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