Tag Archives: chromatin_structure

IL4 cluster revisited

I am interested in 5q31 and the IL4 cluster since I met David Marsh in the lobby of a hotel in Heidelberg around 1993. David was one of the founding fathers of asthma genetics and I renember how he vividly told me that he has a forthcoming Science paper on the IL4 cluster and IgE. The cluster is still one of the best allergy regions where the signalling through IL4 and IL13 now gets more interest than the work of any of his competitors.
Nature genetics now has an update on the 3-dimensional resolution of the genomic region. It is not cristallographic work as might be expected but a nice study of the chromatin structure that is leading to a coordinated expression of these cytokines. SATB1 (special AT-rich sequence binding protein 1) is thought to anchor specialized sequences letting DNA loops come into interaction. I wonder if there might be even a direct physical interaction of the IL4 and IL13 promotor and if there will be any SNP influencing that interaction? David (who died of brain cancer in 1998) would have really liked this work. Yea, yea.

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