A very interesting publication by Stephens and colleagues highlights how human cells can survive after massive genomic rearrangement. By the technique of whole genome sequencing, they identify chromosomes that have been broken and then reassembled. Strikingly, the chromosomes are not always reassembled into the original sequence. It might be compared to shattering a fine china plate and then gluing the fragments together; the outcome may look like a plate even though some pieces are probably not in the right place.
We discussed this publication in our biweekly journal club - BioTalks. We are interested in it because we study how human cells enter mitosis with damaged DNA. It seems that some of the cells that survive this event (checkpoint adaptation) might be able to do so because they have reassembled broken chromosomes.
The reference for the paper is:
Stephens, PJ et al. Cell 144: 27-40, 2011.
