The OIST study concentrates on only one type of condensin. They further speculate that these eliminated macromolecules might be regenerated by the cellular machinery of the daughter cell when necessary.Īt this point, the relevant biochemical processes by which condensin works remain to be apprehended. The OIST researchers speculate that condensin is trimming the hedgerow of the genome during the replication and dividing phase. Norihiko Nakazawa, of OIST's G0 Cell Unit, the paper's first author. 'While these macromolecules are important for the parent cell, they pose hindrances during cell division to segregating the copied chromosomes to daughter cells properly,' said Dr. Accommodating these extra structures into the daughter cell's nucleus might be what increases the overall cell size. Larger cells need more energy to survive and condensin could be crucial to maintaining appropriate DNA content and cell sizes across cellular generations.Įxtraneous structures like RNA and bound proteins are typically present along the length of chromosomes. DNA content in the mutant cells increased and some of the resulting cell sizes were larger. In this mutated strain, there were massive errors in disentangling the separately copied chromosomes from the original. The researchers also engineered a yeast strain where a mutant condensin was produced by the cell when it went into figurative labor. In a lot of cancerous cells, the centromere has an unnatural shape, which could be caused by a malfunction in the relevant cell's scaffolding machinery. The OIST researchers found that the largest amount of condensin aggregates at the centromere, the central knot tying together the two replicated chromosomes.

It also undergoes cell division by first creating copies of chromosomes like most human cells and has a very fast replication cycle, all of which facilitated the study. This type of yeast shares many important genes with us and also has one of the two known condensin complexes in humans. Researchers in OIST's G0 Cell Unit used fission yeast to find the binding sites of this particular protein complex along chromosomal DNA. The protein complex, called condensin, is one of many that become active when cells replicate. The paper was published in Genes to Cells. Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) have mapped the points along the genome where a scaffolding protein crucial to maintaining the genome's structure binds. What does scaffold protein meanA spoken definition of scaffold protein.Intro Sound:Typewriter - TamskpLicensed under CC:BA 3.0Outro Music:Groove Groove - Ke. Just like raising a building requires scaffolding be erected first, cells use biochemical scaffolding machinery to reassemble copied genomic fragments back into chromosomes.

Protein scaffold meaning