SIRT6 is required for maintenance of telomere position effect in human cells

Ruth I. Tennen, Dennis J. Bua, Woodring E. Wright and Katrin F. Chua ()
Additional contact information
Ruth I. Tennen: Stanford University School of Medicine
Dennis J. Bua: Stanford University
Woodring E. Wright: University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Katrin F. Chua: Stanford University School of Medicine

Nature Communications, 2011, vol. 2, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the repressive chromatin environment at telomeres gives rise to telomere position effect (TPE), the epigenetic silencing of telomere-proximal genes. Chromatin-modifying factors that control TPE in yeast have been extensively studied, and, among these, the lifespan regulator and silencing protein Sir2 has a pivotal role. In contrast, the factors that generate and maintain silent telomeric chromatin in human cells remain largely unknown. Here we show that the Sir2 family member SIRT6 is required for maintenance of TPE in human cells. RNAi-mediated depletion of SIRT6 abrogates silencing of both an integrated telomeric transgene and an endogenous telomere-proximal gene. Moreover, enhanced telomeric silencing in response to telomere elongation is associated with increased repressive chromatin marks, and this heterochromatic milieu is lost in SIRT6-deficient cells. Together, these findings establish a new role for SIRT6 in regulating an ageing-associated epigenetic silencing process and provide new mechanistic insight into chromatin silencing at telomeres.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms1443 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:2:y:2011:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms1443

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1443

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().