Ten years ago, researchers at the IMP - a basic research institute in Vienna - discovered a fundamental and amazingly plausible mechanism of cell division. They identified a protein complex, which, as a ring-shaped molecule, slides over the doubled chromosomes and holds precisely these together until the time they again separate. Because of its function as molecular glue, the protein complex was given the name cohesin. In the working group of Jan-Michael Peters, Senior Scientist at the IMP, the molecule was continually monitored over the last ten years. Now Peters and his colleague, Kerstin Wendt, in cooperation with Katsuhiko Shirahige from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, were able to find evidence of another, also essential function of cohesin. As the researchers report in the online issue of the journal Nature, the molecule acts as a regulator of gene expression, and therefore plays an important role in the reading of genes. The molecule fulfills this function entirely independently of its thus far known activity.
