Genome Complexity; handling cell stress (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, January 28, 2015, 18:27 (3588 days ago) @ David Turell

There are feedback loop molecules that control stress-related gene changes. These changes revert back to normal when the stress is gone:-
"Stress is unhealthy. The cells use therefore a variety of mechanisms to deal with stress and avert its immediate threat. However, certain stressful situations leave marks that go beyond the immediate response; some even seem to be passed on to the next generation. One school of thought that has gained a lot of attention lately, hypothesizes that the epigenome, chemical modifications on the DNA and on proteins, carries information about external influences such as stress. However, when and how environmental cues trigger changes in the epigenome and thus influence our response has remained largely unknown.-"To investigate how the environment can influence epigenetic processes, FMI Senior group leader Marc Bühler and his group work with fission yeast. In a paper published in Cell Reports, they report the identification of a regulatory circuit that buffers a potentially deleterious epigenetic switch under stressful conditions. The capacity to prevent such an epigenetic change is important to the organism, perhaps because the altered epigenetic state is maintained for many cell divisions, well after the stress has subsided."-
 Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-01-cellular-memory-stressful-situations.html#jCp