X chromosome inactivation
Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - 07:00
in Biology & Nature
Each cell in a woman's body contains two X chromosomes. One of these chromosomes is switched off, because nobody can live with two active X chromosomes. Hendrik Marks and Henk Stunnenberg, molecular biologists at Radboud University Nijmegen, have shown the mechanism of spreading of this inactivation over the X chromosome, together with the group of Joost Gribnau from Erasmus MC in Rotterdam. The scientific journal Genome Biology will publish the results; a provisional PDF can already be found online.