Tuesday, April 16, 2013

WEE1 tyrosine kinase, a novel epigenetic modifier


I’ve been monitoring newly released papers in Trends in Genetics this semester, and there hasn’t been too much activity regarding primate genomics.  However, there was an interesting paper released relevant to epigenetics (an important topic throughout the class).

WEE1 is a receptor (specifically, a tyrosine kinase receptor) on the plasma membranes of cells that was found to be an important regulator of epigenetic modifications during the DNA synthesis phase of mitosis.  Specifically, it regulates histone synthesis and genome stability by regulating the activity of many factors involved in replication.  For example, it regulates the phosphorylation of the H2B complex, which is a histone protein that organizes DNA in the nucleus.  It is believed that the function of WEE1 is critical for preventing aneuploidy.

The link to the somewhat relevant article is below:

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