Expression profiling of eukaryotic genomes has revealed widespread transcription outside the confines of protein-coding genes, leading to production of antisense and non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs). Studies in Schizosaccharomyces pombe and multicellular organisms suggest that transcription and ncRNAs provide a framework for the assembly of heterochromatin, which has been linked to various chromosomal processes. In addition to gene regulation, heterochromatin is crucial for centromere function, cell fate determination as well as transcriptional and posttranscriptional silencing of repetitive DNA elements. Recently, heterochromatin factors have been shown to suppress antisense RNAs at euchromatic loci. These findings define conserved pathways that probably have major impact on the epigenetic regulation of eukaryotic genomes.

中文翻译：

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RNAi依赖的异染色质形成及其多种功能。

真核基因组的表达谱揭示了在蛋白质编码基因范围之外的广泛转录，导致产生反义和非编码RNA（ncRNA）。在粟酒裂殖酵母和多细胞生物中的研究表明，转录和ncRNA为异染色质的组装提供了框架，异染色质已与各种染色体过程相关。除基因调控外，异染色质对于着丝粒功能，细胞命运测定以及重复DNA元件的转录和转录后沉默也至关重要。最近，异染色质因子已显示在常染色体位点抑制反义RNA。这些发现定义了保守的途径，可能对真核基因组的表观遗传调控有重大影响。