Dear Students and Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to the first lecture of the MU Life Sciences Seminar in the spring semester:

"On the Machines that Make and Repair our Chromosomes" by Dr. Dana Branzei, (IFOM, Italy)

WHEN: Thursday, March 14, 2024, at 4 p.m.
WHERE: Seminar room 132, pavilion B11, University Campus Bohunice

Remember to bring your ISIC card to the lecture!

The announcement is also published here.

PhD students who would like to attend a sponsored lunch with Dr Branzei (Thursday, at 13:00 at Campus River), please register by Wednesday March 13, 2024 using the form at the website.

With best regards,
Linda Nosková
MU LSS administrator
noskova@sci.muni.cz

On the Machines that Make and Repair our Chromosomes

At the core of cellular life lies a carefully orchestrated interplay of DNA replication, recombination, and sister-chromatid cohesion. These fundamental processes, while seemingly discrete, are inextricably linked, as they function not in isolation but in precise harmony to confer genome integrity to dividing cells. A set of non-essential replisome factors integrate these processes during replication, acting not just as an individually optimized machinery for the specific process of genome duplication, but conferring the glue necessary to establish a multi-tiered competency structure. This intertwining of processes creates the blue print of chromosomes that have at the basis a genome that was not shuffled by toxic recombination nor decorated by harmful mutations. Notably, both cohesion and error-free recombination rely on the formation of transient replication junctions between the sister chromatids. These replication junctions involve the cohesin complex and DNA four-way junctions resembling Holliday Junctions. What is the purpose of replication junctions, how do they relate to replication fork architecture, are there “programs” via specific protein interaction hubs leading to their formation? I will discuss these concepts based on the lab results using visualization of replication junctions in cell populations and single molecule electron microscopy experiments.