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Heterochromatin replication goes hand in hand with telomere protection

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology volume 27, pages 313–318 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Telomeres arose from the need to stabilize natural chromosome ends, resulting in terminal chromatin structures with specific protective functions. Their constituent proteins also execute general functions within heterochromatin, mediating late replication and facilitating fork progression. Emerging insights into the mechanisms governing heterochromatin replication suggest telomeres and heterochromatin act in concert during development and aging. They also suggest a common evolutionary origin for these two chromosome regions that arose during eukaryogenesis.

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Fig. 1: Telomere proteins and late replicating domains.
Fig. 2: Telomere proteins and heterochromatin replication elongation.
Fig. 3: Model of telomere evolution.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the cross-cutting Inserm program on aging (AGEMED), the National Reseach Agency (ANR) program TELOCHROM, the Sino-French Partenariat Hubert Curien (PHC) Cai Yuanpei program and the ‘Investments for the Future’ Labex SIGNALIFE (grant reference no. ANR-11-LABX-0028-01).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Medicine, CNRS, INSERM, IRCAN, Université Côte d’Azur, Nice, France

    Aaron Mendez-Bermudez, Marie-Josèphe Giraud-Panis & Eric Gilson

  2. International Research Laboratory for Hematology, Cancer and Aging, Shanghai Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University and Côte-d’Azur University, Shanghai, China

    Aaron Mendez-Bermudez, Jing Ye & Eric Gilson

  3. Department of Genetics, CHU Nice, Nice, France

    Eric Gilson

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  1. Aaron Mendez-Bermudez
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Correspondence to Jing Ye or Eric Gilson.

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Mendez-Bermudez, A., Giraud-Panis, MJ., Ye, J. et al. Heterochromatin replication goes hand in hand with telomere protection. Nat Struct Mol Biol 27, 313–318 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41594-020-0400-1

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