Despite the immense amount of genetic material present in each cell, around 3 billion base pairs in humans, this material needs to be accurately divided in two and allocated in equal quantities. The ...

Centromeres are curious structures. These specially organized chromosomal regions are best known for their unique and critical role in cell division, in which they are well understood to serve as the ...

Despite the immense amount of genetic material present in each cell, around three billion base pairs in humans, this material needs to ...

Epigenetic mechanisms regulate genome activation in diverse events, including normal development and cancerous transformation. Centromeres are epigenetically designated chromosomal regions that ...

The centromere of chromosomes plays a crucial role in cell division. Using the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, an international team of researchers has investigated how two crucial proteins -- KNL2 ...

Centromeres are specialized chromosomal domains that direct kinetochore assembly during mitosis. CENP-A (centromere protein A), a histone H3-variant present exclusively in centromeric nucleosomes, is ...

Researchers from the Kops group in collaboration with researchers from the University of Edinburgh, made a surprising new discovery in the structure of the centromere, a structure that is involved in ...

Evolutionarily young genes that serve essential functions represent a paradox; they must perform a function that either was not required until after their birth or was redundant with another gene. How ...

Some scientists call it the "final frontier" of our DNA -- even though it lies at the center of every X-shaped chromosome in nearly every one of our cells. It's called the centromere, and it plays a ...

Just like you might use a belt to keep your clothes in place, the centromere holds a pair of chromatids together and attaches it to the mitotic spindle during cell division to ensure that each ...

There is a special region in each chromosome, often found at its center: its centromere. During cell division, it ensures that new cells – from sperm and eggs to skin and neurons – end up with the ...