{"id":173256,"date":"2023-10-01T15:24:25","date_gmt":"2023-10-01T20:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/to-defend-the-genome-these-cells-destroy-their-own-dna"},"modified":"2023-10-01T15:24:25","modified_gmt":"2023-10-01T20:24:25","slug":"to-defend-the-genome-these-cells-destroy-their-own-dna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/to-defend-the-genome-these-cells-destroy-their-own-dna","title":{"rendered":"To Defend the Genome, These Cells Destroy Their Own DNA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/to-defend-the-genome-these-cells-destroy-their-own-dna2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In a recent study, scientists stained the DNA of this worm hatchling to hunt down segments of DNA that they\u2019d seen deleted from its genome earlier in development. The deleted fragments (red) survive only in germline cells in the worm\u2019s gonads.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>To figure out what was going on, Delattre\u2019s lab looked at the DNA of an adult worm. The researchers compared the genomes of <i>M. belari<\/i>\u2019s germline cells \u2014 the specialized reproductive cells like sperm and eggs \u2014 with the genomes of the worm\u2019s somatic (nonreproductive) cells. The somatic genomes were missing long strings of sequences present in germline genomes. Sometime between the embryo\u2019s growth from seven cells to 32, huge chunks of DNA had vanished.<\/p>\n<p>The scientists then watched nematode embryos develop under a microscope. As the cells grew and replicated their genomes, they broke 20 chromosomes down into fragments and then reassembled them into 40 miniature chromosomes. Most of the fragments rejoined in this new, smaller genome \u2014 but a substantial fraction were left out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent study, scientists stained the DNA of this worm hatchling to hunt down segments of DNA that they\u2019d seen deleted from its genome earlier in development. The deleted fragments (red) survive only in germline cells in the worm\u2019s gonads. To figure out what was going on, Delattre\u2019s lab looked at the DNA of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}