Functional dissection of the eukaryotic replisome

One of the most important challenges for proliferating cells is to make a single and precise copy of each chromosome before cell division. This is achieved by a complex molecular machine called the replisome. Professor Labib aims to identify and understand the unique features of the eukaryotic replisome that are critical for the duplication and stable inheritance of eukaryotic chromosomes, but which are not shared with the much better characterised replisome of E. coli. A stronger understanding of chromosome replication is important: defects in chromosome replication are an early feature in the pathogenesis of cancer, and so may provide a target for the future development of new therapies to selectively target cancer cells.