The Role of Histone Variant H2A.Z During the Oxidative Stress in Budding Yeast

Organization of the genome in eukaryotes has long been a mystery, and while we have furthered our knowledge in recent years, there is still much that remains unknown. We are particularly interested in the function of one of the histone variants of H2A, H2A.Z. Its presence in a gene promoter can coincide with especially high or low levels of transcription. The mechanism by which this occurs - and why it occurs - is unknown. Here, we seek to understand whether the presence of the variant at several genes is helpful in the context of oxidative stress. We found no transcriptional upregulation or downregulation effect due to deletion of HTZ1, the gene encoding the histone variant H2A.Z, leading us to believe that the variant is not very influential at the three oxidative stress response genes we tested: CYC1, FLR1, or GTT2. However, although our results did not reveal a large role for H2A.Z in expression of these genes, they did reveal other key insights into the oxidative stress response in yeast