the nuclear membranes function was to protect the genetic material inside and to be selective to which molecules are allow in and out. But Chiolo and his team discovered broken strands of heterochromatin being carried to the nuclear membrane to be repaired. Heterochromatin is composed of repeated DNA sequences you may know it as junk DNA. Heterochromatin is essential for chromosome maintenance during cell division and also poses specific threats to genome stability.
Heterochromatin is potentially one of the most powerful driving forces for cancer formation, but it is the 'dark matter' of the genome. Scientist are just beginning to unravel how repair works here.
The body doesn't experience cancers every day because it is efficient molecular mechanism that repairs the damaged DNA. Heterochromatin is different in that the repeated sequences recombine with other repeated sequenced and this causes chromosome aberrations as seen in cancer cells. Their study suggest that the dysfunction of the nuclear membrane can affect heterochromatin repair and cause cancer progression.
They are working with fruit flies to understand how and why organisms become more prone to cancer as they age. The nuclear membrane progressively deteriorates as an organism ages, removing this cell wall against genome instability.
The article can be found here http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151029185601.htm
Wait? What? How does heterochromatin escape the nucleus? How is it reinserted into the genome. Without reading the article, I don't get this at all.
ReplyDeleteI don't really understand whats going on here? Are the heterochromatin removed from the rest of the DNA strand? Im so confused. How does this link to cancer?
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