The technique has been tested on several types of cells, and revealed what the researchers termed self-sustaining transcription clusters, a subset of proteins that play a key role in maintaining cell identity.
These scientists hope that this understanding will expose vulnerabilities that can be targeted to reprogram a cell to stop cancer or other diseases.
“More and more cancer biologists think genome organization plays a huge role in understanding uncontrollable cell division and whether we can reprogram a cancer cell. That means we need to understand more detail about what’s happening in the nucleus,” said Rajapakse.
Rajapakse is senior author on the paper. The project was led by a trio of graduate students with an interdisciplinary team of researchers.
Paper cited: “Deciphering Multi-way Interactions in the Human Genome,” Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-32980-z
