Topic: DNA

Jeff Coller explains how messenger RNA carries information from DNA to the machinery that produces proteins and how researchers are learning to use it therapeutically. The conversation covers vaccination, tailored treatments and approaches connected with gene editing, placing these developments in the broader biology of RNA and its possible role in the origins of life.

Matthew Cobb uses the history of heredity to question the idea that scientific revolutions are instantly recognisable. The lecture follows changing ideas about inheritance, Mendel’s experiments and their rediscovery, evidence for DNA’s genetic role, the double helix and genetic engineering. Even major discoveries did not immediately settle contemporary debates: protein-based accounts of inheritance persisted after 1953, and evidence for DNA’s role in multicellular organisms developed later. These examples show how retrospective accounts can compress gradual changes into apparently decisive mom

Chromosomes are extremely long, active polymers that are spatially organized across multiple scales to promote cellular functions, such as gene transcription and genetic inheritance. During each cell cycle, chromosomes are dramatically compacted as cells divide and dynamically reorganized into less compact, spatiotemporally patterned structures after cell division. These activities are facilitated by DNA/chromatin-binding protein motors called SMC complexes. Each of these motors can perform a unique activity known as “loop extrusion,” in which the motor binds the DNA/chromatin polymer, reels i

The ability to read the DNA sequences of different organisms has transformed biology in much the same way that the telescope transformed astronomy. And yet, much of the sequence found in these genomes is as enigmatic as the Rosetta Stone was to early Egyptologists. With the aim of making steps to crack the genomic Rosetta Stone, I will describe unexpected ways of using the physics of information transfer first developed at Bell Labs for thinking about telephone communications to try to decipher the meaning of the regulatory features of genomes. Specifically, I will show how we have been able