Maja Szymanska-Lejman

Enhancing local meiotic crossovers in Arabidopsis and maize through juxtaposition of heterozygous and homozygous regions - Nature Plants This study discovered that locally confined DNA differences boost crossover rates in both Arabidopsis and maize, revealing a conserved mechanism that can accelerate plant breeding and trait introgress...

Breaking genetics news‼️🌱🌽 A natural DNA trick triples recombination in maize. What we first saw in Arabidopsis (@hendersi lab) a decade ago is now confirmed in crops—opening new doors for plant breeding. Published today in Nature Plants! More details 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

‼️Can we tune crossover hotspot activity by targeting chromatin modifiers? Absolutely!💥
Our screen shows dCas9-JMJ14 represses crossovers at targeted sites, while VP64 boosts them!
🧬 Check our new preprint:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#meiosis4ever #CRISPR #Arabidopsis

It was an incredible meeting! Thank you Ula!! I came back with fantastic memories, new ideas and the Prize for the best talk;-)

SPO11 dimers are sufficient to catalyse DNA double-strand breaks in vitro - Nature A biochemical system recapitulates the hallmarks of meiotic double-strand break formation, with mouse SPO11 catalysing break formation in the absence of any partners and remaining covalently atta...

🥳Just published @nature.com. Over 25 years after the discovery of SPO11 as the enzyme responsible for initiating meiotic recombination, we finally succeeded in reconstituting its DNA cleavage activity.🧵
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Centrophilic retrotransposon integration via CENH3 chromatin in Arabidopsis - Nature An Arabidopsis long terminal repeat retrotransposon integrates de novo into regions occupied by centromere-specific histone variant, showing the impact of centromeric chromatin on transposable element...

Centrophilic retrotransposon integration via CENH3 chromatin in Arabidopsis from Tetsuji Kakutani & colleagues - beautiful insights into control of transposon insertion into the centromeres
www.nature.com/articles/s41...