Published in Seminars in Cell & Developmental Biology
Our understanding of the structure and function of mitotic chromosomes has come a long way since these iconic objects were first recognized more than 140 years ago, though many details remain to be elucidated. In this chapter, we start with the early history of chromosome studies and then describe the path that led to our current understanding of t...
Published in Epigenetics & Chromatin
Cohesin is a key organizer of chromatin folding in eukaryotic cells. The two main activities of this ring-shaped protein complex are the maintenance of sister chromatid cohesion and the establishment of long-range DNA–DNA interactions through the process of loop extrusion. Although the basic principles of both cohesion and loop extrusion have been ...
Published in Current opinion in cell biology
Cohesin and CTCF are key to the 3D folding of interphase chromosomes. Cohesin forms chromatin loops via loop extrusion, a process that involves the formation and enlargement of DNA loops. The architectural protein CTCF controls this process by acting as an anchor for chromatin looping. How CTCF controls cohesin has long been a mystery. Recent work ...
Published in Current genetics
Cohesin is essential for sister chromatid cohesion, which ensures equal segregation of the chromatids to daughter cells. However, the molecular mechanism by which cohesin mediates this function is elusive. Scc3, one of the four core subunits of cohesin, is vital to cohesin activity. However, the mechanism by which Scc3 contributes to the activity a...
Published in Current opinion in cell biology
'Structural maintenance of chromosomes' (SMC) complexes are required for the folding of genomic DNA into loops. Theoretical considerations and single-molecule experiments performed with the SMC complexes cohesin and condensin indicate that DNA folding occurs via loop extrusion. Recent work indicates that this process is essential for the assembly o...
Published in Current opinion in cell biology
Mammalian genomes are organized and regulated through long-range chromatin interactions. Structural loops formed by CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF) and cohesin fold the genome into domains, while enhancers interact with promoters across vast genomic distances to regulate gene expression. Although genomics and fixed-cell imaging approaches help illumina...
Published in Genome Biology
BackgroundThe 3D organization of the chromatin fiber in cell nuclei plays a key role in the regulation of gene expression. Genome-wide techniques to score DNA-DNA contacts, such as Hi-C, reveal the partitioning of chromosomes into epigenetically defined active and repressed compartments and smaller “topologically associated” domains. These domains ...
Published in Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology
BackgroundIn mitotic cells, WAPL acts as a cohesin release factor to remove cohesin complexes from chromosome arms during prophase to allow the accurate chromosome segregation in anaphase. However, we have recently documented that Wapl exerts a unique meiotic function in the spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC) control through maintaining Bub3 stabili...
Published in Frontiers in Immunology
Though viruses have their own genomes, many depend on the nuclear environment of their hosts for replication and survival. A substantial body of work has therefore been devoted to understanding how viral and eukaryotic genomes interact. Recent advances in chromosome conformation capture technologies have provided unprecedented opportunities to visu...
Published in Neoplasia (New York, N.Y.)
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) affects tens of thousands of patients a year, yet survival rates are as low as 25% in certain populations. This poor survival rate is partially due to the vast genetic diversity of the disease. Rarely do 2 patients with AML have the same mutational profile, which makes the development of targeted therapies particularly ...
