Although levels of methylation at lysine 4 on histone H3 (H3K4me3), among others, are normally associated with activation and predictive of gene expression levels, this is not observed in genes regulated through development. Using published data from the modENCODE consortium, the team identified a surprising pattern of absence of these canonical marks of active chromatin in developmentally regulated genes, even when they were highly expressed. Strong histone marking was also associated with transcriptional stability including at the splicing level. These findings were validated experimentally and the next step will be to challenge mammalian developmental systems.
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