Polycomb getting its due at Keystone

I didn?t want to give the impression from my last two posts that it?s all RNAi all the time at this year?s Keystone Symposium on Epigenetics and Chromatin Remodeling in Development. Polycomb group complex (PgC) proteins, their binding sites, and/or how they set up silencing states in development has been a feature in practically every other talk or poster, here. Not simply a 60-year old vagary of __Drosophila__ development that gave rise to wacky phenotypes, PgCs deserve more respect says Renato Paro of the University of Heidelberg who first cloned the gene more than a decade ago. And with Paro as an organizer of the meeting, Polycomb certainly got it?s due here. Increasingly, research is finding PgCs at work in mammals, including humans, and the homeotic genes they control have a powerful effect on development, and maintenance of cellular state. Keji Zhao of the NHLBI presented a collection of putative...