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Home > Active Motif's Podcast > The Role of Non-Histone Proteins in Chromosome Structure and Function During Mitosis (Bill Earnshaw)
Podcast: Active Motif's Podcast
Episode:

The Role of Non-Histone Proteins in Chromosome Structure and Function During Mitosis (Bill Earnshaw)
Category: Science & Medicine
Duration: 01:04:51
Publish Date: 2020-07-23 02:09:33
Description:

In this episode of the Epigenetics Podcast, we caught up with Professor Bill Earnshaw, Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, to talk about his work on the role of non-histone proteins in chromosome structure and function during mitosis.

 

In the beginning of Bill Earnshaw's research career little was known about the structure that holds the two individual sister chromatids together. This led to Bill pioneering in the use of autoantibodies for the identification and cloning of key chromosomal proteins. His identification and cloning of human centromeric proteins using serum from a scleroderma patient was the breakthrough that opened the way for the molecular characterization of the metazoan kinetochore.

 

Later biochemical studies in his lab led to the identification of the chromosomal passenger complex (CPC), containing Aurora B kinase plus its targeting and regulatory subunits INCENP, Survivin, and Borealin/Dasra B. Studies of the CPC are now a core aspect of mitosis research.

 

More recently, in a collaboration with the laboratories of Job Dekker and Leonid Mirny, and using a system for synchronous mitotic entry developed by Kumiko Samejima, the team explored the roles of condensin I and condensin II in mitotic chromosome formation. These studies used a combination of chemical biology, gene targeting, Hi-C genomics, and polymer modeling. The results revealed that interphase higher-order chromatin organization disassembles during prophase as nuclear condensin II forms a helical scaffold from which chromatin loops are extruded. Upon nuclear envelope breakdown, cytoplasmic condensin I accesses the chromatin, forming nested loops that give chromosomes their compact morphology.

 

In this interview, we discuss the story on how centromeric proteins were first identified using sera from human scleroderma patients, how the chromosomal passenger complex was discovered, and how condensin I and II work together in chromatin loop formation.

 

 

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