Edited by: Eugene Russo
J.E. Brownell, J.X. Zhou, T. Ranalli, R. Kobayashi, D.G. Edmondson, S.Y. Roth, C.D. Allis, "Tetrahymena histone acetyltransferase A: a homolog to yeast Gcn5p linking histone acetylation to gene activation," Cell, 84:843-851, 1996. (Cited in more than 250 papers since publication)
Comments by C. David Allis , Byrd professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at the University of Virginia
The fact that eukaryotic DNA is packaged into histones, something scientists have known for some time, had always suggested to investigators that the cell must somehow deal with these packages, must somehow decondense them, possibly using enzymes, to make transcription possible. Prior to this paper, there were generally two camps of researchers: one that studied chromatin and one that studied transcription factors. By finding transcription factors with enzymatic activities dedicated to chromatin modification, David Allis's lab--at the University of Rochester at the time--compelled investigators to link the two ...
