Lateral thinking about chromosome linking

Published On Mon 9 Mar 2015 by Roddy Isles

Scientists led by a group at the University of Dundee have made a significant discovery about how our cells properly inherit their genetic information.

The research team led by Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow Professor Tomo Tanaka and colleagues Dr Maria Kalantzaki and Dr Etsushi Kitamura in the College of Life Sciences at Dundee, working in collaboration with researchers at the University of Oxford, has studied a process of `lateral linking’ by which cells can properly multiply, one of the basic processes in all life.

The researchers say their findings give an insight into how abnormal cell division ends up causing cancers and genetic diseases.

Chromosomes carry genetic information in cells. When cells divide and multiply, a complete set of chromosomes must be duplicated and separated into each new cell with precision, as any error in this process might cause cell death, cancers and genetic diseases.

Proper separation of chromosomes relies on their linking to wire-like structures in the cell. If chromosomes are linked to the wires incorrectly, that link must be removed and a correct one formed.

Professor Tanaka said, “We have discovered that a chromosome is initially linked to the lateral side of a wire, before moving to its tip. The lateral linking allows a chromosome to catch a wire very efficiently. Once a chromosome reaches the tip of a wire, incorrect linkages are recognized and removed, whereas correct ones are retained.

“As lateral thinking often helps us to find a bright idea, so lateral linking helps a chromosome to find a right wire quickly. Future research should address not only how genetic information is inherited during normal cell division but also should study how this process could go wrong.”

The results of the research are published in the journal Nature Cell Biology.

The research has been funded by The Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council, EU’s 7^th Framework Programme for Research, the European Research Council, CR-UK, the Human Frontier Science Programme and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

NOTES TO EDITORS

Life Sciences at Dundee

Dundee was the UK’s top ranked university for Biological Sciences in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework. With more than 900 scientists, research students and support staff from 62 countries and external funding in excess of £50million per annum, the College of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee is one of the largest and most productive Life Sciences research institutes in Europe. The College has an international reputation for its basic and translational research. The University of Dundee is the central hub for a multi-million pound biotechnology sector in the east of Scotland, which now accounts for 16% of the local economy. www.dundee.ac.uk

The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to improving health. We support bright minds in science, the humanities and the social sciences, as well as education, public engagement and the application of research to medicine.

Our investment portfolio gives us the independence to support such transformative work as the sequencing and understanding of the human genome, research that established front-line drugs for malaria, and Wellcome Collection, our free venue for the incurably curious that explores medicine, life and art.

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Roddy Isles
Head of Press
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