Interrelationships of Gene Silencing in Drosophila melanogaster

Gene Silencing is an epigenetic phenomenon that refers to reduction in transcription or knock down of gene activity achieved by mechanisms other than mutation or genetic modification. Silencing can operate at both transcriptional or/and post-transcriptional level. At transcriptional level access to transcriptional machinery is obstructed by different protein complexes while at post-transcriptional level mRNA either undergoes sequence specific degradation or its translation is suppressed. Various silencing processes do not function in a mutually exclusive fashion. This work attempts to understand the interplay between various gene silencing mechanisms.