Ortrun Mittelsten Scheid and Wolfgang Busch have been awarded a joint grant in the WWTF Life Sciences "New Ventures Beyond Established Frontiers" program for their proposal "Quantitative Live Imaging to Determine the Regulatory Impact of Chromatin Dynamics."
The Mittelsten Scheid-Busch proposal was one of 7 grants awarded among 30 full proposals, invited from 120 proposals initially received by the WWTF. The grant is worth €682,700 over 4 years.
Abstract
DNA molecules in the nucleus of a cell, packed with unconceivable density, can nevertheless be accessed for efficient gene expression. Different cellular programs require the transcription of different genome regions, and it is not well understood to what extent and how nuclear organization relates to gene expression programs. We want to develop technology for live imaging of 4D nuclear organization in cells within their native organ context and ask if and how chromatin organization within the nucleus is related to gene expression. We plan to establish live-cell super resolution microscopy and computational image processing methods for analysing the nuclear position of chromatin landmarks in the nucleus during development and stress response in the root of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana.