Nuclear compartments and gene regulation

Improvements in fluorescence microscopy have allowed us to explore the thre e-dimensional organization of the nucleus in ways that were impossible ten years ago, revealing subdomains or compartments within the nucleus defined by their enrichments of subsets of factors. Correlations have been drawn be tween the silencing of a gene and its proximity to a heterochromatic compar tment or to the nuclear periphery. The application of genetics and high-res olution microscopy helps examine the creation, maintenance and impact of th ese compartments on gene expression.