more on dynamics

As one of the previous posts describes, heterochromatin is not always cold and inert. It goes through dynamic transcription during cell cycle progression. The fact that all of the earlier studies used mixed population of cells is the reason of the controversial heterochromatin transcription.

To expand this a little bit, in fact most of modern molecular and cellular biology researches (except cell cycle studies) are done using cells staged at different cell cycle phase. If you think about it, the cell cycle approach could be applied to most of these researches. It is not unexpected if a lot of our current knowledge is refined by taking this approach, for example cancer formation and development. A new science direction is approaching.

dynamic heterochromatin

This is relatively new. But I think it is necessary to put it here before all the historical information. You have to keep this dynamic thing in mind whenever you think about heterochromatin. --I am sure this will be huge in the future.


http://www.jcb.org/cgi/content/full/179/3/411
Proliferation-dependent and cell cycle–regulated transcription of mouse pericentric heterochromatin

http://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/cc/article/6206
Cell cycle regulated transcription of heterochromatin in mammals vs. fission yeast: Functional conservation or coincidence?