Investigating the role of chromatin motion during DNA damage repair

Contrary to what was thought for many years, chromatin is not a static entity. Moreover, we know now that chromatin movement plays an important role in several nuclear processes. In this project, we aim to study chromatin mobility in the context of plant DNA damage repair.

DNA integrity is crucial for the survival of all living organisms, and plant cells are constantly exposed to different types of assaults on DNA integrity. Despite this constant threat, plant cells maintain DNA structure remarkably well. However, little is known about how plants repair DNA in the context of chromatin spatial organization in the nucleus.

This is, however, a critical aspect since repair does not occur on isolated DNA strands but within the 3D structure of the cell nucleus, where damaged DNA strands need to find an intact DNA template for repair. Therefore, it is important to investigate how DNA damage repair is influenced by chromatin mobility in plants.

Our recent findings showed that double-strand breaks increased chromatin mobility both locally (at sites of damage) and globally (genome-wide), but the molecular mechanisms are still unknown.

In this project, we will investigate how chromatin structure changes in response to DNA damage to determine if and how these changes affect the repair rate.

We will use quantitative live fluorescence imaging, single-molecule RNA labeling methods, and molecular genetics to address these questions at the molecular and cellular levels.