Cohesin loading in a context of chromatin
Sofía Muñoz
Centro de Investigación del Cáncer, Salamanca
The cohesin complex has crucial roles in many structural and functional aspects of chromosomes including sister chromatid cohesion, genome organization, gene transcription and DNA repair. Cohesin recruitment onto chromosomes requires a specialized cohesin loader complex comprised of the Scc2 and Scc4 subunits. In vitro, Scc2-Scc4 loads cohesin in a DNA sequence-independent manner, whereas in vivo cohesin is loaded onto chromosomes at centromeres, at the promoters of highly expressed genes, as well as at DNA replication forks and sites of DNA damage.
However, the features that determine these binding sites are still incompletely understood. I will discuss how the interaction between the cohesin loader and chromatin remodelers not only enables cohesin loading onto chromatin but also
influences the chromatin landscape, with implications for our understanding of human developmental disorders including Cornelia de Lange and Coffin-Siris syndromes.