Regulating Centromere Function Through Structure

The Gordon Research Seminar on Centromere Biology is a unique forum for graduate students, post-docs, and other trainees with comparable levels of experience and education exchange new data and cutting edge ideas. This seminar provides a stimulating yet relaxed environment, ideal for fostering future collaborations, networking with colleagues, and conceiving new research directions. Seminar attendees will be able to present their work in an intimate and un-intimidating setting prior to the larger GRC. In addition, a panel discussion will provide an opportunity for junior investigators to address current challenges facing biomedical research and career development and discuss potential solutions.

This meeting focuses on the advice of Francis Crick - "If you want to understand function, study structure" – which applies as strongly to current centromere biology as it did to understanding DNA in the 1950s. The folding of centromeric chromatin to generate local and large-scale structures, and how this influences kinetochore formation and chromosome segregation, remains largely unknown. In addition, key components of centromeric structure continue to be discovered including novel proteins and centromere derived RNAs. The aim of this meeting is to present and highlight recent cellular and molecular advances that show how centromere components come together to build a structure that promotes chromosome segregation, and how disruptions in these components lead to aneuploidy and disease across various organisms.