Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry

A team of researchers from the Bochman and Niu labs worked together to show that an important telomere-binding protein, Cdc13, has an unexpected biochemical activity. It can dynamically exchange between pieces of single-stranded DNA, which may impact how telomeres are replicated and could be connected to cancers or premature aging diseases. This work involved graduate students from the Biochemistry Graduate Program and the Genome, Cell, and Developmental Biology Program, and it was spearheaded by Research Associate David Nickens, Ph.D. You can read the published paper here or access a freely available pre-print here.