The Polycomb Repressor Complexes (PRC1 and PRC2) are crucial to keep stem cells in a pluripotent state, by silencing all genes that would be involved in premature differentiation or cell fate determination. PRC2 is involved in H3 trimethylation and PRC1 in methylation of CpG islands. Regulation of both PRC1 and PRC2 is mainly on the level of post-translational modification of the PRC components (such as EZH1/2, PCL1-3, RING1A-B ...) and target specifity is speculated to be governed by non-coding RNAs. There are also many observations that suggest illegitimate PRC2 activation plays a role in carcinogenesis, tumor progression and development of therapy resistant sub-clones. I am wondering if there is a (or a set of) reliable gene-expression markers which represent a good indicator for the activity of PRC1 or PRC2.
I would be grateful for any suggestions, Michael
Hi Michael,
It is a interesting topic Michael. PRC1 leads to monoubiquitination of H2AK119 not methylation in CpG islands. There have been many groups who have knocked out or Knocked Down specific PcGs (both PRC1 and PRC2) to identify the target most affected, but there isn't a particular gene that's affected. Different groups have got different protein owing to different starting materials (mES, hES, MSCs). It can be said that some key transcription factors can be used as read out of PRC1 or PRC2 activity, but it will depend on cell type to be used.
Regards,
Prasad.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Social Psychology
- Attitude