Despite the fact that the gene responsible for Huntington's disease (HD) is known, we still do not understand the underlying mechanisms leading to neurodegeneration and death. Identifying and understanding the mechanisms controlling mutant huntingtin (mHtt ...
Biogenesis of eukaryotic box C/D small nucleolar ribonucleoproteins initiates co-transcriptionally and requires the action of the assembly machinery including the Hsp90/R2TP complex, the Rsa1p:Hit1p heterodimer and the Bcd1 protein. We present genetic inte ...
The synthesis of cytoplasmic eukaryotic ribosomes is an extraordinarily energy-demanding cellular activity that occurs progressively from the nucleolus to the cytoplasm. In the nucleolus, precursor rRNAs associate with a myriad of trans-acting factors and ...
Lysine acetylation is a widespread posttranslational modification affecting many biological pathways. Recent studies indicate that acetylated lysine residues mainly exhibit low acetylation occupancy, but challenges in sample preparation and analysis make i ...
The recruitment of RNA-Pol-II to the transcription start site (TSS) is an important step in gene regulation in all organisms. Core promoter elements (CPE) are conserved sequence motifs that guide Pol-II to the TSS by interacting with specific transcription ...
The regulation of gene expression controls development, and changes in this regulation often contribute to phenotypic evolution. Drosophila pigmentation is a model system for studying evolutionary changes in gene regulation, with differences in expression ...
Around 2200 copies of genes encoding ribosomal RNA (rRNA) in pedunculate oak, Quercus robur, are organized into two rDNA loci, the major (NOR-1) and the minor (NOR-2) locus. We present the first cytogenetic evidence indicating that the NOR-1 represents the ...
Nucleic acid synthesis is spatially organized in many organisms. In bacteria, however, the spatial distribution of transcription remains obscure, owing largely to the diffraction limit of conventional light microscopy (200-300 nm). Here, we use photoactiva ...
Designing genetic networks with desired functionalities requires an accurate mathematical framework that accounts for the essential mechanistic details of the system. Here, we formulate a time-delay model of protein translation and mRNA degradation by syst ...
Telomerase contains a large RNA subunit, TER, and a protein catalytic subunit, TERT. Whether telomerase functions as a monomer or dimer has been a matter of debate. Here we report biochemical and labeling data that show that in vivo-assembled human telomer ...
Telomere are the protective terminal structures of linear chromosomes. The repetitive TTAGGG sequences are bound by the dedicated shelterin complex, as well as by histones carrying modifications characteristic of silent chromatin. Like the centromeric hete ...
Small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) play a key role in ribosomal RNA biogenesis, yet factors controlling their expression are unknown. We found that the majority of Saccharomyces snoRNA promoters display an aRCCCTaa sequence motif at the upstream border of a TA ...
Cdc14 family phosphatases are highly conserved regulators of cell-cycle progression. Two of the best studied members of this family are budding yeast Cdc14p and its fission yeast homolog Clp1p/Flp1p. The function of both Saccharomyces cerevisiae Cdc14p and ...
In the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, the onset of septum formation is signalled via the septation initiation network (SIN) involving several protein kinases and a GTPase. Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica napus proteins homologous to fission yea ...
