Congratulations! ETH awarded Anis a PostDoc Fellowship Grant
This year, Dr Anis Meschichi is awarded the ETH post-doctoral fellowship grant for the project PolyChromPaint (Polyploidy Chromatin and OligoPAINT).
In eukaryotes, chromosomes are not randomly distributed in the nucleus but are organized into territories and regions that impinge on the regulation of genes as well as pairing and DNA damage repair. However, what is happening to this tightly regulated 3D nuclear organization after Whole-genome duplication (WGD)? WGD perturbs chromosome segregation, gene expression regulation and cell physiology, but little is known about the mechanisms of these challenges, especially at the cellular and nuclear levels; why polyploids often show stochastic variation in traits is also unclear. I hypothesize that the increase in nuclear volume that accompanies the increase in DNA content after WGD might disrupt the 3D organization of chromosomes within the nucleus. To test this, I will take advantage of recent microscopy technologies, including DNA OligoPAINT and superresolution microscopy, to study 3D nucleus organization before and immediately after WGD, as well as over longer-term evolution using the plant Arabidopsis arenosa. This project will rise novel approaches which will be broadly useful in investigating the adaptation of the nucleus to WGD and fundamental questions regarding the origin of this organization, while also generating novel and broadly useful tools.
“It is a great honour to receive this ETH fellowship and an exciting opportunity for a microscopist to study the chromatin organization after WGD by developing cut-edge microscopy technics. My aim will be not only this project, but also to fill this gap between nuclear architecture studies, plant development, and evolution with an avant-garde approach. Now it is time to PAINT” says Anis Meschichi.