Chromosome Dynamics

Chromosome Dynamics is a key area of research within ICaMB and Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology, both headed by Professor Jeff Errington.

Chromosome Dynamics not only aids our understanding of life, but is of central importance to human health – so it is an area of great interest to the pharmaceutical industry, and an exciting and rewarding area of fundamental science.

Our research covers a range of organisms from bacteria to humans, allowing for exciting discussion on the similarities and differences between systems.

ICaMBs world standing in this research is exemplified by many publications in journals; Ling Juan Wu and Jeff Errington were recently invited to write a News and Views article for Nature on how bacterial chromosomes are moved away from their site of division (Nature 451:900-901, 2008). They have also previously published their research in Cell 117:915-925, 2004).

Our researchers are also invited to prestigious international conferences; four of our scientists presented work at the Gordon Conference on Chromosome Dynamics, in Maine 2007.

Much interest also exists in eukaryotic Chromosome Dynamics and there are many eukaryotic models being used in ICaMB:

  • single cell systems such as budding and fission yeast;
  • human and murine cell lines;
  • multicellular organisms such as sea urchins, C.Elgans, Drosophila and Zebrafish.

Our research includes:

  • Work from the Morgan group in the budding yeast S.cerevisiae has shown that Polo Kinase plays a key role in mitosis  (Nature 444:494-498, 2006).
  • Work from the Whitehall group in fission yeast S.Pombe Hip3 has been shown to be required for accurate chromosome segregation (J.Biol.Chem 281; 8732-8739, 2006).
  • David Lydall an associate member of ICaMB has used yeast systems to extensively study chromosome structure and dynamics (Nat Cell Biol 8:734-740, 2006).
  • Stephan Gruber has used yeast to investigate the role of cohesion in chromosome dynamics (Cell 127: 523-537, 2006).  
  • The response of cells to DNA damage involves alterations in chromosomes dynamics and this has been studied by a number of groups in ICaMB both in yeast and in mammalian cells (DNA repair 4:1195-1207, 2005) and (PLoS One 2:1057, 2007).

Chromosome segregation errors can occur as part of the normal chromosome manipulations and are problematic to human health. For example non disjunction causes chromosomal segregation errors that result in trisomies such as Downs’s syndrome and early pregnancy loss. Such non disjunction errors occur in meiosis.

Work in ICaMB has revealed a fundamental difference between how meiosis is controlled in mammals compared to other species demonstrating the value of using multiple model organisms. It involves anaphase promoting complex (APC) and  CDK1 and cdh1(Nature Cell Biology 9:1192-1198, 2007).

  • Using Drosophila as a model organism JunYong Huang and colleagues have demonstrated a role for APC and CDK1 in mitosis (J. Cell Sci 120:1990-1997, 2007).  Mark Levasseur who was involved in this mammalian meiosis research also uses other evolutionally distant model systems such as acidians and demonstrated the importance of sperm triggered calcium signalling in acidian zygotes.
  • The Whitaker group showed that inhibiting MAP kinase activity prevents calcium transients and mitosis entry in early sea urchin embryos (J. Biol. Chem. 280:24957-24967, 2005.) Calcium signalling is important for many processes involved in chromosome dynamics and is strongly represented in ICaMB. Michael Whitaker recently co-organised a Royal Society Discussion meeting on calcium signalling and written a prestigious review on this topic.

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