The London Research Institute hosts a number of conferences throughout the year and has extensive seminar schedules as part of its education programme.
Highlighted Paper: Regulatory Control of the Resolution of DNA Recombination Intermediates during Meiosis and Mitosis.
Submitted by hawkes07 on Thu, 20/10/2011 - 11:13
The Genetic Recombination Laboratory headed by Steve West published this paper in Cell this month.
Matos J, Blanco MG, Maslen S, Skehel JM, West SC. Regulatory Control of the Resolution of DNA Recombination Intermediates during Meiosis and Mitosis. Cell. 2011 Sep 30;147(1):158-72. (Abstract)
Efficient DNA repair provides an important mechanism for protecting the integrity of our genetic material (DNA). One way that cells repair broken chromosomes involves 'recombination', a process by which the broken DNA is repaired using similar DNA sequences as a template. In the course of these repair reactions, DNA intermediates arise - in which the two DNA molecules are interlinked - and the resolution of these intermediates is necessary for subsequent chromosome segregation and cell division.
This paper shows that the timely activation of two nucleases (Mus81-Eme1 and Yen1, that essentially act as scissors) helps to coordinate repair with cell cycle progression and allow efficient chromosome segregation. Importantly, without proper control, their actions would lead to genome instability and tumourigenesis. The nucleases were also found to play key roles in germ-line cells undergoing meiosis, where their activation leads to the formation of crossovers that are critical for the completion of meiotic recombination, a process that is responsible for creating the mix of parental genes that ultimately provides the genetic make-up of our offspring.
