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Blood, 1 November 2007, Vol. 110, No. 9, pp. 3391-3397. Prepublished online as a Blood First Edition Paper on July 17, 2007; DOI 10.1182/blood-2007-02-076091.
RED CELLS Role of epigenetic modifications in normal globin gene regulation and butyrate-mediated induction of fetal hemoglobin1 Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY
Butyrate is a prototype of histone deacetylase inhibitors that is believed to reactivate silent genes by inducing epigenetic modifications. Although butyrate was shown to induce fetal hemoglobin (HbF) production in patients with hemoglobin disorders, the mechanism of this induction has not been fully elucidated. Our studies of the epigenetic configuration of the β-globin cluster suggest that DNA methylation and histone H3 acetylation are important for the regulation of developmental stage-specific expression of the β-like globin genes, whereas acetylation of both histones H3 and H4 seem to be important for the regulation of tissue-specific expression. These studies suggest that DNA methylation may be important for the silencing of the β-like globin genes in nonerythroid hematopoietic cells but may not be necessary for their silencing in nonhematopoietic cells. Furthermore, our studies demonstrate that butyrate exposure results in a true reversal of the normal developmental switch from
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