Molecular mechanism of functional centromere establishment at novel DNA region

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24370003
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Partial Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Genetics/Genome dynamics
• Research Institution: Osaka University
• Principal Investigator: ISHII Kojiro 大阪大学, 生命機能研究科, 特任准教授(常勤) (40360276)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: ゲノム / 染色体 / セントロメア / キネトコア

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Although centromere establishment at the novel DNA region without any sequence specificity has been proven inductively, its mechanism has been poorly elucidated molecularly due to the difficulty in the retrospective analysis. Therefore, we investigated the molecular mechanism of a phenomenon in the fission yeast experimental system in which a functionally-insufficient neocentromere, or the new-born centromere at ectopic position, gets matured in generations reproducibly. Our results indicated that functional insufficiency of the neocentromere comes from the poor association of centromere-specific histone CENP-A and its molecular chaperone Scm3, which is recovered upon maturation, and the recovery is attributable to the paucity of histone H2A.Z caused by the heterochromatin adjacency and/or the chromosomal position effect.

Free Research Field

分子生物学