Seminar by Olga Dudchenko
Olga Dudchenko of Baylor University will be visiting Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics to do a talk on Thursday 1st June, at 14.30. Her talk is entitled 3D genomics across the tree of life reveals condensin II as a major determinant of nuclear architecture.
Olga works in the team of Erez Aiden, that invented the HiC technique that is central to a range of modern genomics studies, including generating super high quality reference genomes, but also studying how DNA is actually packed in cells, and what variation in that structure means.
Title: “3D genomics across the tree of life reveals condensin II as a major determinant of nuclear architecture”
Abstract:
The mechanisms controlling nuclear architecture at the scale of whole chromosomes remain poorly understood. We investigated the principles of genome folding across the eukaryotic tree of life by assembling the genomes, performing in situ Hi-C and generating chromosome-length contact maps for 24 different species, representing all subphyla of chordates, all seven extant vertebrate classes, seven of nine major animal phyla, as well as plants and fungi. We find two major types of three-dimensional genome architectures at the chromosome scale. Each type appears and disappears repeatedly during eukaryotic evolution. The type of genome architecture that an organism exhibits correlates with the absence of condensin II subunits. Moreover, condensin II depletion converts the architecture of the human genome to a state resembling that seen in organisms such as mosquitoes and fungi with centromeres clustered together. We propose a physical model in which lengthwise compaction of chromosomes by condensin II during mitosis determines chromosome-scale genome architecture, with effects that are retained during the subsequent interphase.