Stephen B. Baylin1 & Kornel E. Schuebel1
Readout of information from the genome depends on intricate regulation of how DNA is packaged by proteins. The great endeavour to reveal how this packaging operates pan-genomically is now under way.
A new era is opening for biologists involved in understanding cellular systems. It is exemplified by papers by Mikkelsen et al. (page 553 of this issue)1 and Barski et al. (published in Cell)2 — they describe the kind of unprecedented insights that are emerging from investigations of how a single mammalian genome can be regulated to produce different cell types.
The technical and biological advances described in these studies extend the remarkable accomplishments of elucidating the structure3, then the sequence4, 5, of the human genome; and they reflect a growing, 'post-genomic', appreciation of the complexities of genome structure and function (Fig. 1). The intriguing — and daunting — challenge now is to understand the process of how and when specific DNA regions are controlled to produce the cellular diversity that underpins the development and maintenance of a single organism.
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