CSHL scientists discover how 'companion' cells to sperm protect them from gene...(er which was written in collboration wit...)

Date:2/5/2009

er, which was written in collboration with a team of pollen specialists from the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia in Lisbon, Portugal. "It allows its own transposons to get activated and suffers DNA damage to essentially just enforce epigenetic reprogramming and transposon silencing in the next generation."

Other organisms, such as insects and lower living forms such as ciliates, also carry sperm cells adjacent to larger companion or nurse cells. The authors propose that like plants, these organisms might have also evolved this system of epigenetic reprogramming in which the "revelation" of transposons in the genome of companion cells results in the control of transposon activity in the sperm.

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Contact: Hema Bashyam bashyam@cshl.edu 516-367-6822 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Source:Eurekalert

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