How much of the way a brain works reflects fundamental principles shared across species—and how much has been shaped by the particular environments and behaviors a species has […]

Chromosomes must pair accurately to form healthy reproductive cells. Here, the authors show in mice that this pairing occurs in defined steps controlled by DNA recombination and chromosome-joining str...

Abstract. The formation of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) by Spo11 is tied to the loop-axis organization of meiotic chromosomes. Before DSB formation, chr

Evolutionarily related ‘proto-point’ centromeres providing resolution to the evolutionary origins of point centromeres are identified in yeast, and comparison shows they evolved in an ancestor with re...

Karolin Luger's research led to the capture of a high resolution image of chromatin, resulting in the development of innovative drug treatments for diseases like cancer.

Accurate repair of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) is essential for genome stability, and defective repair underlies diseases such as cancer. Homologous recombination uses an intact homologous sequenc...

Cohesin folds genomes into chromatin loops, the roles of which are under debate. We found that double-strand breaks (DSBs) induce de novo formation of chromatin loops in human cells, with the loop bas...

Meiotic crossover formation is critical for generating viable gametes and enhancing genetic diversity. The helicase Mer3 (HFM1 in humans) is a highly conserved factor essential for promoting crossover...

Saccharomycopsis yichangensis sp. nov. occurs in soil from a subtropical forest in central China. This novel species is homothallic and produces asci containing four spheroidal ascospores, which can ...

Meiotic recombination is required to break up gene linkage and facilitate faithful chromosome segregation during gamete formation. By inducing DNA double-strand breaks, Spo11, a protein that is conser...

This year, James M Berger, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine will return to Harvard to present the Doty Lecture, “Still Unscrambling the Puzzle of Biological Machines: […]

How genomic DNA is folded during cell division to form the characteristic rod-shaped mitotic chromosomes essential for faithful genome inheritance is …

Diplonemids are highly diverse and abundant marine plankton with significant ecological importance. However, little is known about their biology, even in the model diplonemid Paradiplonema papillatum ...

Eukaryotes have linear DNA and their telomeres are hotspots for transposons, which in some cases took over telomere maintenance. Here we identify several families of independently evolved telomeric tr...

In general, the kinetochore position and the sister-chromatid cohesion site are spatially linked. Here, the authors find a meiosis-specific distal cohesion site decoupled from the kinetochore in Perom...

imageimageThe naturally occurring S. cerevisiae 2µ plasmid is one of few documented cases of eukaryotic plasmids, undergoing equal distribution between mother and daughter cells during mitosis. Using ...

Nature Communications - Extrachromosomal circular DNA (eccDNA) can drive cancer and other age-related diseases. Here, Liang et al. present an atlas of eccDNA in mammals, and demonstrate that the...

Activity of the purified SPO11 enzyme reconstituted in cell-free system.