Abstract
Transcriptional repression occurs during meiotic maturation of Xenopus oocytes. Injection of a DNA template containing an hsp70 promoter into Xenopus oocytes, followed by progesterone-induced maturation has been used to demonstrate a dynamic competition between the assembly of transcription factor-containing nucleoprotein complexes and repressive nucleosomal arrays during the maturation process. In particular, it is shown that increased levels of injected heat shock protein, the transcriptional activator Gal4-VP16 or the DNA template itself all lead to reduced repression of transcription on maturation. Conversely, injection of additional histone increases repression. Repression of transcription is shown to be accompanied by the formation of a more regular array of nucleosomes and by an increase in the efficiency of nucleosome assembly on the injected plasmid. Meiotic maturation is therefore accompanied by replacement of transcription factor complexes by a repressive chromatin environment.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 4361-4373 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | EMBO Journal |
Volume | 16 |
Issue number | 14 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jul 16 1997 |
Keywords
- Heat shock
- Meiosis
- Nucleoprotein
- Transcription repression
- Xenopus
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Cell Biology
- Genetics