University of Kaiserslautern Department of Molecular Genetics

Our Research Unit addresses an important question on the origin of chromosome instability (CIN), which causes structural as well as numerical chromosome aberrations. Importantly, CIN and increased levels of chromosome aberrations are closely associated with many human diseases including cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and age-related syndromes and can act as key drivers for disease development and progression. An important condition that causes structural chromosome instability (S-CIN) leading ...

Cancer is a disease of the genome, with both structural and numerical chromosomal aberrations, so called aneuploidy, occurring concomitantly in most tumors. Despite this co-occurrence, the advances in the characterization of point mutations and structural and numerical changes failed to provide an insight into a possible functional relationship between structural and whole chromosomal instability. Recently, novel evidence suggests that numerical chromosomal aberrations leads to delayed S phase ...

Replication stress is a key driver of genomic instability giving rise to human disease, for instance cancer or developmental disorders. It is caused by a variety of defects such as lesions blocking replication (e.g. DNA interstrand crosslinks) or processes that lead to the exhaustion of DNA precursors. This generates under-replicated DNA and replication intermediates that can be rescued by repair processes requiring homologous recombination between sister chromatids. Often, cells exposed to ...