The heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1) protein family maintains heterochromatin by reading H3K9 methylation and recruiting diverse chromatin effectors. Multiple effectors compete for the same binding sur...

The emergence of reproductive barriers between closely related populations is a fundamental step in speciation, yet the underlying genetic mechanisms remain poorly understood in mammals. Here we resol...

Many animal species replace histones with protamines during spermatogenesis. Although essential for sperm function, protamines evolve rapidly for reasons that remain unknown. Using in vivo gene replac...

Transposable elements mobilize within and occasionally between genomes, including from host to virus. We identified two insertions of the human BC200 noncoding RNA gene in the poxvirus molluscum conta...

Inside cells, DNA is intimately associated with proteins, forming chromatin. The protein constituents of chromatin vary across the tree of life: histones are the principal building blocks of chromatin...

Job #AJO32408, Assistant Professor in Cell and Developmental Biology, Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, CA

In Schizosaccharomyces pombe , the conserved CHD remodeler Mit1 function within the SHREC remodeler-deacetylase complex (a homolog of the metazoan Mi-2/NuRD complex), which is essential for H3K9 methy...

Aggregative multicellularity was key to the evolution of the multicellular animal genetic toolkit.

In Metazoa, transposon expression is suppressed by the piRNA pathway, and disruption of this pathway leads to rampant transposon expression. However, it remains unclear whether increased transposon ex...

SINEs are short transposable elements that make up large fractions of mammalian genomes. Known to be transcribed by RNA polymerase III, their regulation has remained largely unexplored. Schnabl-Baumga...

The emergence of the eukaryotes coincided with the diversification of histone proteins and their post-translational modifications by enzymes that constitute the core of eukaryotic chromatin. Yet the e...

RNA viruses co-opt host endomembranes to form replication complexes, often triggering cellular stress and immune responses. Here, we show that Arabidopsis thaliana activates selective autophagy to res...

Background The ability to deposit histone H3K27-trimethyl (me3) marks is essential for transcriptional repression by Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2). This is largely attributed to Polycomb repres...

Chromatin plays a central role in gene regulation, but chromatin systems are only known for a few model species. This study analyses chromatin regulatory landscapes in brown algal lineages to elucidat...

Synthetic proteins designed to bind specific repetitive DNA sequences in the Trypanosoma brucei genome allow the identification of proteins enriched over different DNA elements.

Here proteomic chromatome analysis shows metabolic enzymes widely localize to chromatin in cancer in a tissue-specific manner. Nuclear enzymes affect DNA damage/repair and transcription, revealing non...