Description:

The Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics Departmental Seminar Series presents:

Kyle Eagen, PhD
Feinberg Fellow, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

The folding and compaction of DNA within nuclei and chromosomes is one of the great mysteries of biology, impacts gene regulation, and influences heredity, but the molecular basis of this folding remains poorly understood. At the most basic level, DNA is wrapped around histones in the nucleosome to form an extended “beads-on-a-string” chromatin fiber. Chromosome conformation capture methods, such as Hi-C, employ chemical cross-linking of chromatin followed by restriction digestion, ligation, and high-throughput DNA sequencing to detect further folding of the chromatin fiber. Hi-C has revealed the segregation of chromatin into active and inactive compartments as well as the folding of DNA into loops and self-associating domains, also known as topologically associating domains (TADs). I will describe how our research combines concepts and approaches from cell biology, biochemistry, and structural biology with methods and analytical tools from molecular biology and genomics to determine the structural and biochemical basis of these chromatin folding paradigms.