University of Massachusetts Medical School Faculty Publications

Title

DNA Replication Timing

UMMS Affiliation

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology

Publication Date

2013-07-09

Document Type

Article

Subjects

DNA Replication Timing; Eukaryota; Genome

Disciplines

Genomics | Molecular Genetics | Structural Biology

Abstract

Patterns of replication within eukaryotic genomes correlate with gene expression, chromatin structure, and genome evolution. Recent advances in genome-scale mapping of replication kinetics have allowed these correlations to be explored in many species, cell types, and growth conditions, and these large data sets have allowed quantitative and computational analyses. One striking new correlation to emerge from these analyses is between replication timing and the three-dimensional structure of chromosomes. This correlation, which is significantly stronger than with any single histone modification or chromosome-binding protein, suggests that replication timing is controlled at the level of chromosomal domains. This conclusion dove tails with parallel work on the heterogeneity of origin firing and the competition between origins for limiting activators to suggest a model in which the stochastic probability of individual origin firing is modulated by chromosomal domain structure to produce patterns of replication. Whether these patterns have inherent biological functions or simply reflect higher-order genome structure is an open question.

DOI of Published Version

10.1101/cshperspect.a010132

Source

Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med. 2013 Jul;3(7):1-26. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a010132

Related Resources

Link to Article in PubMed

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine

PubMed ID

23984435

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS