Hot spots of DNA double-strand breaks and genomic contacts of human rDNA units are involved in epigenetic regulation.

ABSTRACT: DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) are involved in many cellular mechanisms, including replication, transcription, and genome rearrangements. The recent observation that hot spots of DSBs in human chromosomes delimit DNA domains that possess coordinately expressed genes suggests a strong relationship between the organization of transcription patterns and hot spots of DSBs. In this study, we performed mapping of hot spots of DSBs in a human 43-kb ribosomal DNA (rDNA) repeated unit. We observed that rDNA units corresponded to the most fragile sites in human chromosomes and that these units possessed at least nine specific regions containing clusters of extremely frequently occurring DSBs, which were located exclusively in non-coding intergenic spacer (IGS) regions. The hot spots of DSBs corresp

SUBMITTER: Tchurikov NA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4524424 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature