Dr. Pamela Silver and colleagues have taken a systems approach to address the correlation between a gene's location in the nucleus and its transcriptional activity. In a poignant example of how the nuclear organization of yeast genes change when the cell undergoes a dramatic switch in its transcriptional program, Dr. Silver and colleagues treated S. cerevisiae cells with the mating pheromone, alpha factor, and then used genome-wide location analysis to observe that alpha-factor-responsive genes became associated with nuclear pore components.

This finding represents a relatively surprising positive role for gene recruitment to the nuclear periphery. "The large extent of gene reorganization in response to a developmental switch is quite amazing and represents a new level of control that will have far reaching implications in, for example, generation of cell polarity in developing neurons," explains Dr. Silver.

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Contact: Heather Cosel
coselpie@cshl.edu
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
14-May-2005

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