Raul Mostoslavsky, MD, PhD, Massachusetts General
Hospital Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School
Recently, we discovered that the mammalian histone deacetylase sirtuin 6 (SIRT6) is a chromatin factor that influences glucose metabolism and DNA repair. Our results indicate that SIRT6 directly regulates expression of several key glycolytic and ribosomal genes. Strikingly, our new studies indicate that SIRT6, in contrast to other histone deacetylases (HDACs), appears to regulate transcriptional elongation, a novel function for HDACs. Our work identified SIRT6 as a critical chromatin deacetylase at a nodal point between epigenetics and metabolism, functioning as an important tumor suppressor.
