Origin selection articles from across Nature Portfolio

Here the authors investigate the impact of chromatinizing origins of replication on ORC and MCM is at the single-molecule level. They find mobility of ORC reduced, but not its binding to the origin. MCM is both efficiently recruited and spatially confined to the origin.

The precise rule of replication origin selection and activation in metazoans remains unclear. Here, the authors identify NFIB as a genome organizer and replication pioneer by facilitating nucleosome remodeling and chromatin assembly of the pre-RC.

A program regulating replication origins ensures the exact duplication of vertebrate genomes. The authors identify a combination of guanine-rich motifs, known to form secondary DNA structures, which are sufficient to assemble efficient replication origins.

A protocol for quantitative genome-wide detection of replication initiation, fork progression and termination, based on purification and strand-specific sequencing of Okazaki fragments isolated from mammalian or yeast cells.

Most eukaryotes do not use a consensus DNA sequence as binding sites for the origin recognition complex (ORC) to initiate DNA replication, however budding yeast do. Here the authors show S. cerevisiae ORC can bind nucleosomes near nucleosome-free regions and recruit replicative helicases to form a pre-replication complex independent of the DNA sequence.

The range of available copy numbers for cloning vectors is largely restricted to the handful of ORIs that have been isolated from plasmids found in nature. Here the authors introduce a plasmid system that allow for the continuous, finely-tuned control of plasmid copy number between 1 and 800 copies per cell.

Poly(dA:dT) tracts characterize strong DNA replication origins in mammals and cause replication-fork collapse and DNA breaks that underlie the expression of fragile sites.