How do mammalian germ cells pass on the correct number of chromosomes to the next generation?
Supervisor: Professor Ian Adams
Inheriting the wrong number of chromosomes is one of the most common types of human genetic disease. Inherited aneuploidies typically arise from errors in meiotic chromosome segregation that involve a failure to generate or maintain physical links between homologous chromosomes. A zipper-like protein structure known as the synaptonemal complex assembles between homologous chromosomes during meiosis to promote recombination and form these physical links. However we don’t know how recombining DNA interacts with or is regulated by synaptonemal complex. We will use gene-edited mice and super-resolution imaging to build on our recent findings identifying how synaptonemal complex is recruited to recombination sites to perturb protein-DNA interactions within this structure with a view to understanding why generating links between homologous chromosomes is so error-prone in human meiosis.
Crichton JH±, Dunce JM±, Baarends W, Davies OR*, Adams IR* (2022) Parallel recruitment pathways contribute to synaptonemal complex assembly during mammalian meiosis. bioRxiv 2022.04.14.488335