Learning from the Leishmania: Does a plastic genome require especial maintenance?

Event details

Speaker: Dr Jeziel Damasceno

Gene and Chromosome Copy Number Variation (CNV and CCNV) are hallmarks of genome instability that are normally detrimental to survival, including being seen frequently in cancer.

Unusually, Leishmania ssp parasites have a remarkably plastic genome, in which genome-wide rearrangements, such as CNV and CCNV, are used for adaptation, including drug resistance. The peculiar genome maintenance mechanisms that mediates such tolerance to plasticity are not very well understood in Leishmania parasites.

In this talk, Dr Jeziel Damasceno will discuss: i) what we have recently learned, by using next-generation sequencing, about the space, temporal and functional compartmentalisation of the genome replication programme in Leishmania; and ii) the pivotal role of homologous recombination in the replication initiation in Leishmania, as revealed by conditional genome engineering and next-generation sequencing.