An ambitious EC-funded research initiative on epigenetics advancing towards systems biology

Understanding the epigenetic identity and nuclear organization of centromeres is the major focus in my lab. CenH3, a centromere-specific histone H3-variant essential for kinetochore assembly is considered as the key epigenetic centromere mark. By artificially targeting Drosophila cenH3 (CENP-A in humans, CID in Drosophila) as a CID-GFP-LacI fusion protein to stably integrated Lac Operator (LacO) arrays in Drosophila tissue culture, we could show that CID is both necessary and sufficient to nucleate heritable centromere function. Using this biosynthetic approach we are now interested to dissect different functional domains of cenH3 and quantify the binding parameters of cenH3 with other centromere proteins. In addition to genetic, developmental, biochemical, and cytological analysis, quantitative live imaging and time-lapse microscopy will be used as major tools in these studies.

Researcher involved:

• Dr. Virginie Roure (Postdoc)
• Georg Schade (PhD student)