New publication from the Hickson group in Cell Research

The Hickson group from the Center for Chromosome Stability in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine have mapped, at high resolution, the genomic location of all of the common fragile sites that exist in the human genome. To achieve this, they exploited the fact that cells complete DNA replication at fragile sites in mitosis. They performed this analysis in both cancer cells and normal cells, because cancer cells are unusually prone to displaying chromosome fragility due to the genetic changes that occur during tumorigenesis. Several novel loci that complete replication in mitosis were also identified that had not previously been defined as being fragile sites. The authors speculate that these loci are also fragile sites and intend to confirm this in future studies. This study was a collaboration with the Halazonetis laboratory at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Read the article “High-resolution mapping of mitotic DNA synthesis regions and common fragile sites in the human genome through direct sequencing” (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41422-020-0358-x)