Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CHROMREP (Dissecting the chromatin response to DNA damage in silenced heterochromatin regions)
Reporting period: 2021-06-01 to 2022-05-31
We developed a variety of DNA damage systems in fruit fly tissue that allow for in-depth analysis of heterochromatin domain-specific repair responses. We are currently combining these systems with chromatin analyses and high-resolution live imaging to dissect the DNA damage-associated heterochromatin changes and determine their function in DNA damage repair.
Deciphering the processes that regulate DNA damage repair in heterochromatin will have broad conceptual implications for understanding the role of these dynamics in other essential nuclear processes, such as replication and transcription. More importantly, understanding how repair is regulated in heterochromatin could be important in determining how cancer-associated changes in these repair processes impact tumour -development and -treatment in the long run.