Transcription modulation chromosome-wide: universal features and principles of dosage compensation in worms and flies.

Dosage compensation processes in flies and worms provide a unique opportunity to study common regulatory principles of thousands of genes. Technological advancement in the recent years has allowed for the comprehensive description of key aspects such as the targeting of the regulatory factors, the emerging chromatin structure changes and the ensuing subtle transcriptional alterations. With plenty of data at hand the challenge remains to integrate the findings into coherent models that appreciate the global nature of the underlying principles leaving the experimental anecdotes behind while avoiding the numerical burlesque.