Neurological Disease: Listening to Gene Silencers

Proposed mechanism for activation of gene expression by derepression. Although NRSF is schematized to bind to the NRSE, the REST4 protein competes with NRSF for association with Sin3 corepressor complex. Thus sequestered away from interacting with NRSF, the corepressor–HDAC complex cannot remove acetyl groups (AcO) from nucleosomal core histones, and the RNA polymerase machinery (RNA PII) is thus able to form a transcriptionally active complex with the promoter.