Dominika Gruszka and Lars Jansen Receive Wellcome Trust Discovery Award

Dominika Gruszka and Lars Jansen Receive Wellcome Trust Discovery Award

We are thrilled to announce that Dominika Gruszka from #KavliOxford and Lars Jansen from the Department of Biochemistry have been awarded the Wellcome Trust Discovery Award for their interdisciplinary project titled "Discovering the epigenetic principles of human centromere seeding and inheritance".

Chromosome segregation during mitosis and meiosis ensures the faithful transmission of genetic information to daughter cells. This crucial process relies on the centromere, a specialised chromosomal region bound by proteins that connect chromosomes to spindle microtubules. Despite being identified over a century ago, the precise mechanisms behind the specification of a single centromere per chromosome and its replication during cell division remain a central question in biology. This project aims to address these fundamental questions.

Centromere function and position depend on a unique chromatin domain featuring the histone H3 variant, Centromere Protein A (CENP-A). The project seeks to understand how centromeres can be seeded through de novo assembly of CENP-A chromatin, establish a stable CENP-A chromatin domain, and ensure its inheritance. By combining their expertise in in vivo and in vitro approaches, the Jansen and Gruszka labs will explore the components and principles underlying CENP-A chromatin seeding and maintenance, forming the basis of the epigenetic inheritance of human centromeres.

This research is pivotal for understanding cell division failures that lead to aneuploidy, such as those occurring during oncogenic transformation, and could aid future efforts to engineer human artificial chromosomes.

Dominika Gruszka shared her excitement: “I am very excited to be joining forces with Lars to discover how human centromeres are formed and stably inherited through cell division. Centromeres remain an enigma, and our carefully crafted interdisciplinary approach will help us answer fundamental questions that lie at the heart of centromere biology.”

Congratulations to Dominika Gruszka and Lars Jansen on their achievement!

Since April 2021, Oxford University's KAVLI Institute for Nanoscience Discovery is proudly serving as a hub for research groups from seven different departments spanning both the medical and physical sciences, including the Gruszka Lab from the Department of Physics.