Origins and Innovations in Gene Regulation: The Case of Chromatin Regulation

joint work with Sonja J Prohaska and David C Krakauer The prevalent picture of the Last Common Ancestor is a highly complex ribo-protein organism. DNA genomes, so the story goes, have been acquired late, possibly independently in different domains of life. How can we understand the extant complexity and diversity of transcriptional regulation in this scenario? A plausible answer can be given if one views chromatin as a regulatory machinery rather than as a mere structural schaffold guaranteeing the stability of the genetic material. Surprising similarities between the three domains of life provide support for this point of view. The subsequent evolution of chromatin-based regulatory mechanism in eukaryotes indeed point at a tremendously complex computational machinery operating on a versatile read-write memory with a storage capacity comparable to that of the underlying genome.

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