PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Natalia Y. Kochanova
AU  - Tamas Schauer
AU  - Grusha Primal Mathias
AU  - Andrea Lukacs
AU  - Andreas Schmidt
AU  - Andrew Flatley
AU  - Aloys Schepers
AU  - Andreas W. Thomae
AU  - Axel Imhof
TI  - Intricate structure of the interphase chromocenter revealed by the analysis of a factor involved in species formation
AID  - 10.1101/441675
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 441675
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/10/14/441675.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/10/14/441675.full
AB  - In higher eukaryotes centromeres often coalesce into a large intranuclear domain called the chromocenter. Chromocenters are important for the organization of pericentric heterochromatin and a disturbance of their formation results in an upregulation of repetitive elements and causes defects in chromosome segregation. Mutations in the gene encoding for the centromere associated Drosophila speciation factor HMR show very similar phenotypes suggesting a role of HMR in chromocenter architecture and function. We performed confocal and super resolution microscopy as well as proximity based biotinylation experiments of HMR and its associated protein HP1a to generate a molecular map of HMR and HP1a bound chromatin. Our work reveals an intricate internal structure of the centromeric chromatin region, which suggests a role of HMR in separating heterochromatin from centromeric chromatin.