The Gasser group discovered that silencing of heterochromatic regions—and more specifically of hundreds of Polycomb-target genes enriched for H3K27me3—can occur through selective RNA degradation, and not only through transcriptional repression. The study links the epigenetics state of a gene with the fate of its RNA transcript. It is the first time that this is shown in higher eukaryotes.
Click here for original story, RNA degradation contributes to gene silencing in higher eukaryotes
Source: Phys.org