Tatsuya Hirano

..These results shed light on the mechanism by which sister chromatid cohesion is partially dissolved in early mitosis, far before the onset of anaphase, in vertebrate cells...

..Emerging evidence suggests that eukaryotic SMC proteins form large protein complexes with non-SMC subunits and act as key components for a wide variety of higher-order chromosome dynamics...

..In vertebrate cells, two different condensin complexes make distinct mechanistic contributions to determining the shape and integrity of mitotic chromosomes...

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..Recent genetic and biochemical studies have identified key components involved in these processes and started to uncover hitherto unexpected functional links between mitotic chromosome dynamics and other important chromosome functions...

..We propose that the hinge domain of SMC proteins is not a simple dimerization site, but rather it acts as an essential determinant of dynamic SMC-DNA interactions...

..Cleavage pattern of SMC2 by limited proteolysis is changed upon its binding to ATP or DNA. Our results shed new light on the architecture and dynamics of this highly elaborate machinery designed for chromosome assembly...

..This process is known as sister-chromatid resolution. Although two mitotic kinases have been implicated in this process, it remains unknown exactly how the cohesin-mediated linkage is destabilized at a mechanistic level...

..This idea would explain why cells lacking Pds5 function display rather complex and diverse phenotypes in different organisms...

..More importantly, our results strongly suggest that cohesin release at the onset of mitosis is essential for sister chromatid resolution but not for condensin-mediated compaction...

..Our results suggest that vertebrate Scc2 couples replication licensing to sister chromatid cohesion by facilitating the loading of cohesin onto chromatin...

..We propose that the two condensin complexes make distinct mechanistic contributions to mitotic chromosome architecture in vertebrate cells...

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..It seems most likely that the action of SMC proteins is highly dynamic and plastic, possibly involving a diverse array of intramolecular and intermolecular protein-protein interactions...

..Apparently contradictory to the generally accepted model, we find that neither chromosome condensation nor chromosomal targeting of condensin is compromised when H3 phosphorylation is drastically reduced by depletion of INCENP-aurora B...

..In bacterial cells, ancestral forms of condensins control chromosome dynamics. Dissecting the diverse functions of condensins is likely to be central to our understanding of genome organization, stability and evolution...

..An emerging idea is that the hinge and head domains cooperatively modulate cohesin-DNA interactions by opening and closing the ring in a highly regulated manner...

..An emerging idea is that SMC proteins use a diverse array of intramolecular and intermolecular protein-protein interactions to actively fold, tether and manipulate DNA strands...

..Our results suggest that SMC proteins possess an intrinsic property to change their own conformations upon binding to DNA...

..Our results suggest that topo II plays an important role in an early stage of chromosome condensation, and that this function of topo II is tightly coupled with prior DNA replication...

..We propose that the ATP-modulated engagement/disengagement cycle of SMC proteins plays both positive and negative roles in their dynamic interactions with dsDNA...

..Condensin is thought to contribute to large-scale DNA compaction during mitotic chromosome assembly. It remains unknown, however, how the complex reconfigures DNA structure at a mechanistic level...

..Our results offer a molecular explanation for the aberrant chromosome condensation in MCPH1-deficiency and provide additional evidence that condensin I and II are regulated by distinct pathways...

..We propose a unified model of chromosome structure in which hierarchical levels of chromatin folding are stabilized late in mitosis by an axial "glue."..

..We propose that the "closed" conformation of condensin and the "open" conformation of cohesin are important structural properties that contribute to their specialized biochemical and physiological functions...

..The extreme compaction of mitotic chromosomes is determined mainly by the high amount of bivalent ions bound to DNA at mitosis...

..In this review, we discuss recent work that sheds new light on the molecular and structural dynamics of mitotic chromosomes...

..Moreover, condensin recruitment to chromatin is not sufficient to promote condensation...

..The current results suggest that the action of condensin is more dynamic and more efficient than that postulated before, providing fundamental insight into the energy-dependent mechanism of higher order chromatin folding...

..Especially in HuH7 cells, c-Jun transfected cells failed to make any colonies. Our data suggested that c-Jun activation can induce negative effect on survival and proliferation of HCC cells...

..Dissecting this class of chromosomal ATPases is likely to be central to our understanding of the structural basis of genome organization, stability, and evolution...

..These results suggest that heterologous expression of fungal Lcc1 in BY-2 cells will be a valuable tool for the production of sufficient quantities of active laccase for bioremediation...