Talk:Regulation of gene expression

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I disagree with the definition of gene regulation as the regulation of protein expression at the DNA and RNA level. It's true that most of the time, the end product of the expression of a gene is a protein, however, it is not always true, and I think that it is too much of a simplification of what gene regulation is to start of the whole overview with that as a definition.

I think that in the last decade we have learned that proteins are not the only active catalytic moiety that exists in a cell and that the work of a cell sometimes relies on special catalytic RNAs or is regulated by even more specialized RNAi's. In other words, defining gene regulation as regulation of protein expression overlooks the RNA world and places too much emphasis on the end product of a gene being a protein. When the central dogma read DNA -> RNA -> protein, the definition was true, but we now know that there need to be some loops and turns in the central dogma, so the definition is no longer suitable.

I chose to address this change in the talk section because I think that I am proposing a major change in the definition of gene regulation and I didn't want to suppose that my definition is the correct one without some form of discussion.

What do people feel, is this worth a discussion or should I just change the sentence and see what people think?

thanks, Stephen R. Lasky, Institute for Systems Biology User:Srlasky

Dr Lasky, you have every right to modify the page. If it is disliked, someone will change it back! In the present form, the page certainly answers to the old dogma. A mention of the emerging theories would be entirely appropriate. Would you care to elaborate if catalytic RNA is an issue of concern in higher lifeforms?

Your input is most welcomed. There is a dearth of contributors with biological expertise on Wikipedia. JFW | T@lk 13:34, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Dr. Lasky's comments, and have corrected the definition on this page. Turan P. Urmenyi, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro User:Turan

[edit] Prokaryotic gene regulation

This page seems to be exclusively about eukaryotic gene regulation. Fror example this sentence: Octameric protein complexes called histones are responsible for the amount of supercoiling of DNA, is simply not true for prokaryotes. There are two possible solutions, either make a Prokaryotic gene regulation article and a seperate Eukaryotic gene regulation article, or try to be more specific and make less generalisations in this article. I've been doing some work on the lac operon article and it could really do with a parallel article on prokaryotic gene regulation in order to fill in the gaps, so I'm in favour of the first option. What's the general feeling?Alun 05:42, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Structural modification

According to the article this is a consequence of phosphorylation and methyation, both are chemical modifications, so it should be under the same heading. Andreas ^(T) 00:03, 9 November 2006 (UTC)