Regulation of DNA replication-coupled histone gene expression

// Qianyun Mei 1, * , Junhua Huang 1, * , Wanping Chen 1, 2 , Jie Tang 1 , Chen Xu 1 , Qi Yu 1 , Ying Cheng 1 , Lixin Ma 1, 2 , Xilan Yu 1, 2 and Shanshan Li 1, 2 1 Hubei Collaborative Innovation Center for Green Transformation of Bio-Resources, Hubei Key Laboratory of Industrial Biotechnology, College of Life Sciences, Hubei University, Wuhan, Hubei 430062, China 2 Hubei Key Laboratory of Industrial Biotechnology, College of Life Sciences, Hubei University, Wuhan, Hubei 430062, China * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Xilan Yu, email: yuxilan@hubu.edu.cn Shanshan Li, email: shl@hubu.edu.cn Keywords: DNA replication, histone gene transcription, cell cycle Received: August 08, 2017      Accepted: September 20, 2017      Published: October 16, 2017 ABSTRACT The expression of core histone genes is cell cycle regulated. Large amounts of histones are required to restore duplicated chromatin during S phase when DNA replication occurs. Over-expression and excess accumulation of histones outside S phase are toxic to cells and therefore cells need to restrict histone expression to S phase. Misregulation of histone gene expression leads to defects in cell cycle progression, genome stability, DNA damage response and transcriptional regulation. Here, we discussed the factors involved in histone gene regulation as well as the underlying mechanism. Understanding the histone regulation mechanism will shed lights on elucidating the side effects of certain cancer chemotherapeutic drugs and developing potential biomarkers for tumor cells.