Replication and nuclear Dynamics

The organization of the genetic information in the form of chromatin is critical for cell function since the winding of the DNA around nucleosomes stabilizes it, regulates the accessibility and allows the control of transcriptional programs and the maintenance of cellular identity. However, every time the cell divides the chromatin structure is disorganized. To allow the pass of the replication machinery, the parental histones that form the nucleosomes, has to be evicted ahead of the replication fork and reassembled, together with newly synthesized histones, in the two daughter strands to restore nucleosome density. Our laboratory makes use of cutting-edge molecular biology technologies and high-throughput sequencing to study the chromatin changes that occur after DNA replication and understand the role that this processes could have in the development of human diseases.