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Constitutive heterochromatin: a surprising variety of expressed sequences

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Abstract

The organization of chromosomes into euchromatin and heterochromatin is amongst the most important and enigmatic aspects of genome evolution. Constitutive heterochromatin is a basic yet still poorly understood component of eukaryotic chromosomes, and its molecular characterization by means of standard genomic approaches is intrinsically difficult. Although recent evidence indicates that the presence of transcribed genes in constitutive heterochromatin is a conserved trait that accompanies the evolution of eukaryotic genomes, the term heterochromatin is still considered by many as synonymous of gene silencing. In this paper, we comprehensively review data that provide a clearer picture of transcribed sequences within constitutive heterochromatin, with a special emphasis on Drosophila and humans.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Patrizia Lavia for critical reading of the manuscript and to Roger Hoskins and DHGP for sharing informations on heterochromatin sequence and gene annotation. We also wish to thank three anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions. The P. Dimitri laboratory was supported by grants from Istituto Pasteur-Fondazione Cenci Bolognetti and National Institute of Health. G.Biamonti was supported by grants from AIRC and Cariplo.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratorio di Genomica Funzionale e Proteomica di Sistemi modello and Istituto Pasteur-Fondazione Bolognetti, Dipartimento di Genetica e Biologia Molecolare “Charles Darwin“, Università “La Sapienza“, Via dei sardi 70, Rome, 00185, Italy

    Patrizio Dimitri & Maria Carmela Accardo

  2. Dipartimento di Genetica e Microbiologia, Università di Bari, Via Amendola 165/A, Bari, 70126, Italy

    Ruggiero Caizzi

  3. Dipartimento di Genetica, Biologia generale e Molecolare, Università di Napoli Federico II, Via Mezzocannone 8, Naples, 80100, Italy

    Ennio Giordano

  4. Istituto di Genetica Molecolare IGM unit of Bologna c/o Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli (IOR), -via di Barbiano 1/10, Bologna, I40136, Italy

    Giovanna Lattanzi

  5. Istituto di Genetica Molecolare, Via Abbiategrasso, 207, Pavia, 27100, Italy

    Giuseppe Biamonti

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  1. Patrizio Dimitri
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  2. Ruggiero Caizzi
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  3. Ennio Giordano
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  4. Maria Carmela Accardo
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  5. Giovanna Lattanzi
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  6. Giuseppe Biamonti
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Correspondence to Patrizio Dimitri.

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Communicated by S. Pimpinelli

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Dimitri, P., Caizzi, R., Giordano, E. et al. Constitutive heterochromatin: a surprising variety of expressed sequences. Chromosoma 118, 419–435 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00412-009-0211-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00412-009-0211-y

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