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. 2011 Jun;7(6):e1002093.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1002093. Epub 2011 Jun 2.

Revisiting heterochromatin in embryonic stem cells

Irina Stancheva  1
Affiliations

Revisiting heterochromatin in embryonic stem cells

Irina Stancheva. PLoS Genet. 2011 Jun.
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Chromatin landscapes in ES cells and terminally differentiated neurons.
In ES cells, facultative heterochromatin domains marked by H3K9me2 (blue) cover a large proportion of the genome (∼53%). Terminal differentiation of ES cells into pyramidal neurons in vitro is accompanied by net gain of H3K9me2 (∼5%), mostly at new domains over the bodies of actively transcribed genes, and localized loss of H3K9me2 from much smaller regions. The focal loss of H3K9me2 could be induced by binding of specific transcription factors and modifiers (yellow/orange circles) to gene regulatory regions. Importantly, the overall size and distribution of stable H3K9me2 domains remain largely unchanged. Promoters carrying bivalent (active H3K4 [green] and repressive H3K27 [red]) marks are resolved into monovalent state during differentiation. Although different and very specific sets of genes are expressed in ES cells and neurons, the overall global transcriptional output of the genome is conserved.
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