About event
This is part of the Principal Investigator Seminar Series.
ABSTRACT:
Telomeres, essential nucleoprotein structures delimiting ends of linear eukaryotic chromosomes, and telomerase, an enzyme responsible for compensation of their shortening during each DNA replication, are of general interest, because their dysfunction is correlated with aging and serious diseases, including cancers. Plants are extremely interesting and useful model organisms in telomere and telomerase biology, since they have evolved some specificities, which counteract the effects of telomere malfunction and could thus be relevant to treatment of human telomere syndromes. The most important one is that length of telomeres is stably maintained during the whole plant life due to the active telomerase in meristematic tissues containing dividing cells. This phenomenon is closely related to the totipotent character of plant cells, and high regeneration capabilities of plants.
In the talk, I will present (i) sequence diversity of plant telomeric repeat units inclusive of unique approach for their identification, (ii) telomere dynamics during callus propagation and plant regeneration, and (iii) recent views on the structure of telomeric chromatin end epigenetic regulation of telomere maintenance. Finally, our relevant research in progress will be introduced.
