MBB 196 Undergraduate Seminar: Archaea’s Answer to Chromosome Compaction

Archae-what?

Archaea is the third domain of life, majorly composed of extremophiles, and often overshadowed in research and publications by its counterparts: eukaryotes and bacteria. Common to these three domains is the large genome that needs to be compacted to fit in a cell, a mere fraction of its size. In this regard, it is well-established that bacteria use nucleoid-associated proteins to arrange and compact their chromosomes, while eukaryotes use histones to form nucleosomes. Archaea, on the other hand, have more diverse DNA-binding proteins distributed across their phyla, with some resembling eukaryotic histones and others having unique mechanisms of action. One of these proteins is MC1, present in the phylum Euryarchaeota, which has novel bending mechanisms to compact DNA, and strays away from those found in bacteria and eukarya.

Join us this Friday, May 16, 2025, at 1:00 pm in NIMBB Room 105 to discuss MC1’s atypical compaction mechanisms and its interesting role in maintaining genome stability in extreme conditions.

See you then!