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After the DNA of the human genome and that of many other model organisms has been completely sequenced it seemed like the “book of life” was now at our disposal. However, it is now clear that an enourmous amount of epigenetic information is superimposed on the genetic code. This is implemented by cytosine methylation, a process that modifies DNA differently in different stages of development and in different cell types. In addition, the packaging of DNA in chromatin plays a major role in its availability to the transcription machinery: modification of nucleosomal histones, the “histone code”, dictates chromosomal structure and mediates the assembly of heterochromatin and euchromatin.

Some of the DNA that has so far been regarded as “junk” now turns out to encode small regulatory RNAs (miRNAs) that regulate gene expression posttranscriptionally. MiRNAs are closely related to siRNAs that have gained special attention when the Nobel Prize 2006 was awarded to A. Fire and C. Mello, the dicoverers of RNA interference. Interestingly, small regulatory RNAs are also involved in chromatin organization and thus part of the epigenetic machinery.

After the DNA of the human genome and that of many other model organisms has been completely sequenced it seemed like the “book of life” was now at our disposal. However, it is now clear that an enourmous amount of epigenetic information is superimposed on the genetic code. This is implemented by cytosine methylation, a process that modifies DNA differently in different stages of development and in different cell types. In addition, the packaging of DNA in chromatin plays a major role in its availability to the transcription machinery: modification of nucleosomal histones, the “histone code”, dictates chromosomal structure and mediates the assembly of heterochromatin and euchromatin.

Some of the DNA that has so far been regarded as “junk” now turns out to encode small regulatory RNAs (miRNAs) that regulate gene expression posttranscriptionally. MiRNAs are closely related to siRNAs that have gained special attention when the Nobel Prize 2006 was awarded to A. Fire and C. Mello, the dicoverers of RNA interference. Interestingly, small regulatory RNAs are also involved in chromatin organization and thus part of the epigenetic machinery.

The Genetics Group at Kassel University investigates the mechanisms of RNA interference and chromatin remodelling in the single cell eukaryotic model organism Dictyostelium discoideum.