The Role of Hexokinases in Epigenetic Regulation: Insights from Altered Expression of Hexokinases and Chromatin Stability

Hexokinases (HXKs) are the key enzymes regulating glycolysis in cells. Overexpression of HXKs has been linked to numerous types of cancers and targeting HXKs has been suggested as a potential strategy of cancer therapy. How these abnormal HKs express affect epigenetics and gene expression is less understood. In this study, we artificially altered the HXKs expression level and test its impact on the parental nucleosome transfer process, a key replication coupled-epigenetic inheritance process, in yeast cells. Our result suggests the altered HXKs expression level has little effect on the parental nucleosome assembly and chromatin instability. However, 2- Deoxy-D-glucose(2DG), a HXK inhibitor, treatment cells show increased chromatin instability. Strand specific chip analysis at replication forks for hexokinase 2 deletion and expression strains of yeast