Abstract

Over the past three years work in the laboratory of Dr. Lubomir Tomaska at Comenius University in the Slovak Republic has been supported by a FIRCA award (TWO 5654) under the parent grant GM31819 to Dr. Jack Griffith at the University of North Carolina. The FIRCA support has resulted in 14 publications and 10 meeting abstracts from the Tomaska laboratory in the past 3 years with two high profile papers just published in TheJournalof Biological Chemistry. These studies have laid the foundation for investigations of telomere structure which are being seen as very significant by investigators both in the US and internationally. The work has been done primarily at Comenius University with 1to 3 month visits each year by Dr. Tomaska and his students to UNC. All funds from the award have gone to his laboratory.
In Aim I, the development of the yeast S. cerevisciae minichromosome system will allow the isolation of native minichromosomes for examination by electron microscopy (EM) providing an important new tool that will directly benefit the goals of the parent grant and the objectives of the Griffith laboratory. This minichromosome system will be used by the Tomaska laboratory to continue their examination of the architecture of yeast telomeres.
In Aim II, work also initiated under the FIRCA award will continue on the reconstitution of a yeast telosome in vitro using the S. pombe system. In the past funding period the telomere binding protein, Taz1 was shown to form loops at the ends of model S. pombe telomeres. This now places us in a position to understand how Taz1 protein interacts with Pot1 and other telomere binding proteins to form a native telosome. The parent NIH grant has supported the development of methods for examining DNA-protein complexes by EM, and transferring these methods to other laboratories. This technology transfer has now begun with Dr. Tomaska's students learning these EM methods. It is critical that we continue this highly productive international collaboration.

  Funding Agency

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Fogarty International Center (FIC)
Type
Small Research Grants (R03)
Project #
5R03TW005654-06
Application #
7337130
Study Section
International and Cooperative Projects 1 Study Section (ICP)
Program Officer
Katz, Flora N
Project Start
2001-08-01
Project End
2010-12-31
Budget Start
2008-01-25
Budget End
2010-12-31
Support Year
6
Fiscal Year
2008
Total Cost
$30,585
Indirect Cost

  Institution

Name
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Department
Microbiology/Immun/Virology
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
608195277
City
Chapel Hill
State
NC
Country
United States
Zip Code
27599

  Publications

Valach, Matus; Pryszcz, Leszek P; Tomaska, Lubomir et al. (2012) Mitochondrial genome variability within the Candida parapsilosis species complex. Mitochondrion 12:514-9
Valach, Matus; Farkas, Zoltan; Fricova, Dominika et al. (2011) Evolution of linear chromosomes and multipartite genomes in yeast mitochondria. Nucleic Acids Res 39:4202-19
Gunisova, Stanislava; Bartosova, Zdenka; Kramara, Juraj et al. (2010) Formation of C-terminally truncated version of the Taz1 protein employs cleavage-box structure in mRNA. Biochem Biophys Res Commun 392:391-6
Kramara, Juraj; Willcox, Smaranda; Gunisova, Stanislava et al. (2010) Tay1 protein, a novel telomere binding factor from Yarrowia lipolytica. J Biol Chem 285:38078-92
Kinsky, Slavomir; Mihalikova, Andrea; Kramara, Juraj et al. (2010) Lack of the catalytic subunit of telomerase leads to growth defects accompanied by structural changes at the chromosomal ends in Yarrowia lipolytica. Curr Genet 56:413-25
Fricova, Dominika; Valach, Matus; Farkas, Zoltan et al. (2010) The mitochondrial genome of the pathogenic yeast Candida subhashii: GC-rich linear DNA with a protein covalently attached to the 5' termini. Microbiology 156:2153-63
Nosek, Jozef; Holesova, Zuzana; Kosa, Peter et al. (2009) Biology and genetics of the pathogenic yeast Candida parapsilosis. Curr Genet 55:497-509
Tomaska, Lubomir; Nosek, Jozef; Kramara, Juraj et al. (2009) Telomeric circles: universal players in telomere maintenance? Nat Struct Mol Biol 16:1010-5
Tomaska, Lubomir; Nosek, Jozef (2009) Telomere heterogeneity: taking advantage of stochastic events. FEBS Lett 583:1067-71
Visacka, Katarina; Gerhold, Joachim M; Petrovicova, Jana et al. (2009) Novel subfamily of mitochondrial HMG box-containing proteins: functional analysis of Gcf1p from Candida albicans. Microbiology 155:1226-40

Showing the most recent 10 out of 21 publications