Dr. Fang-Lin Sun (Tsinghua University) and colleagues report on a heretofore unidentified link between ribosomal proteins and chromatin – providing additional insight into the long-standing mystery as to why components of the translation machinery exist in the cell nucleus. Dr. Sun and colleagues found that in the nuclei of Drosophila cells, ribosomal proteins are associated with linker histone H1 protein on chromatin. Depletion of the ribosomal proteins and H1 caused up-regulation of target genes, suggesting that the association of ribosomal proteins and histone H1 mediates transcriptional gene repression. Dr. Sun is confident that "This study will have strong impact on our understanding the relationship between the machineries of chromatin, transcription and protein synthesis in eukaryotes."
Genes & Development