Proteins & Enzymes

Proteins involved in DNA methylation and DNA demethylation are useful for epigenetic research applications such as enzyme kinetics, selectivity profiling, screening inhibitors, antibody production and protein arrays. DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs) are the major players that methylate DNA and are involved in various biological processes from embryonic development to tumorigenesis.

These recombinant histone proteins have various site-specific and degree-specific modifications including methylation, demethylation, acetylation, deacetylation, phosphorylation, and sumoylation. Modified histone proteins play a role in a wide variety of processes including regulating gene expression. Specifically, they are implicated in diseases as a result of disrupted gene expression.

Unmodified histone proteins such as H3 and H4 are useful for studying epigenetic mechanisms such as histone methylation, histone acetylation, and histone phosphorylation, which occur as a result of the modification to histone proteins by various enzymes. These modifications are studied because of their impact on gene regulation and numerous biological processes of organisms.

Methyl-CpG binding domain proteins (MBD proteins) and proteins that interact with methyl-CpG-binding proteins are involved in the complex process of transcription regulation. Specifically, methylated DNA binding proteins play a role in transcriptional repression by preventing the access of transcription factors to target sites. They close the chromatin structure by recruiting histone deacetylases (HDACs) and histone methyltransferases (HMTs) and are central to epigenetic studies.

Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) proteins such as PARP1, PARP2, PARP3, and PARP4, are involved in cell signaling and cell activities such as apoptosis and DNA repair. Recent research suggests ADP ribose proteins, or PARP proteins, impact the degree of DNA methylation in various ways.

Chromatin binding/transcription proteins can interact directly with specific target DNA sequences to regulate gene expression. These proteins regulate transcription and chromatin structure and are implicated in numerous biological processes, especially disease development and cancer.

Proteins involved in DNA damage and repair are crucial to understanding processes involved in repairing molecular lesions of the DNA, which can often lead to genetic mutations and an inability of the cell to transcribe the gene of the affected area of the DNA. DNA damage and repair proteins can be especially useful as targets for cancer therapy.