Peering down protein-DNA interactions to better understand how genes work
Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - 06:30
in Biology & Nature
Almost every one of our cells has an entire copy of our genome. But only differing subsets of genes are active and expressed in any given cell. Epigenetics is the study of how the activity of our genes is controlled and regulated. It is based on where and how so called regulatory proteins interact with DNA to control the activity of genes. But probing this fundamental biological process has conventionally been limited. Time-consuming chemical processes are used to link proteins to DNA and determine binding sites. This means that important fast interactions are missed.