Resumen de The impact of chromosome positioning in nuclear functions
Chromatin is not randomly organized inside the eukaryotic nucleus in interphase. In budding yeast gene expression of some specific loci is affected by their positioning in the nucleus. Replication firing of early origins is also correlated to the position of the respective ARSs (Autonomously Replicating Sequences) in the nucleus. However, the relationship between nuclear positioning and DNA processes is not yet fully understood.
To study the importance of chromosome positioning in nuclear processes and cell physiology, we use budding yeast strains carrying fused chromosomes, which are expected to dramatically change the chromosomes configuration in interphase. By combining microscopy and computational modeling we show that the chromosomes arrangement in strains carrying fused chromosomes is greatly modified. Despite the reorganization of chromosomes in the nucleus, our functional experiments show that transcriptional activity, replication timing and response to stress conditions are not affected. The results, thus, indicate that the function of the genome is mostly independent of chromosome positioning in the budding yeast nucleus.
