What is the purpose of his tone acetylation?

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The acetyl group makes the lysine residues on histone protein less positively charged, thus wanting to bind to dna less tightly -> resulting in transcriptional activation.

Histone methylation does the opposite.


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An example: The Lysine 9 (K9) residue of the mammalian Histone 3 protein's tail is trimethylated (all H's on Nitrogen are replaced with CH3) by an epigenetic enzyme called Setdb1, a histone methyltransferase. Trimethylation of H3K9 results in profound gene silencing (heterochromatin) because the histones tightly wrap DNA and join closer together to close any gaps and exposed DNA that could be transcribed by RNA polymerase.
 
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