The protein CHD1 is a member of the family of ATPase-dependent chromatin remodeling factors. CHD1, which recognizes trimethylated histone H3 lysine 4, has been implicated in transcriptional activation in organisms ranging from yeast to humans. It is required for pre-mRNA maturation, maintenance of mouse embryonic stem cell pluripotency and rapid growth of the mouse epiblast. However, the functi...

1 Centre de Recherche, Institut Universitaire de Gériatrie de Montréal, QC, Canada 2 Centre d’Études Avancées en Médicine du Sommeil, Hôpital du Sacré-Cœur de Montréal, QC, Canada 3 Department of Radiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Montreal, QC, Canada 4 Movement Disorders Unit, McGill University Health Centre, Montréal, QC, Canada 5 Unité des Troubles du Mouvement André Barbeau, Cent...

9 Five to ten per cent of all breast carcinomas are of hereditary origin. Many of them have been associated to 10 mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 susceptibility genes. No ‘‘BRCA3’’ gene has been found to account for 11 the non-BRCA1/BRCA2 breast cancer (BRCAx) families, and BRCAx tumors are increasingly believed to 12 originate from multiple distinct genetic events. Phenotype studies have ques...

One of the most versatile mammalian DNA repair pathways is nucleotide excision repair (NER) in which repair factors assemble sequentially on DNA damage. First, XPC-hHR23b locates DNA injuries in a critical step initiating the formation of the preincision complex (PInC). Subsequently, XPC-hHR23b recruits the transcription/repair factor TFIIH (Sugasawa et al., 1998) containing ten subunits (XPB, ...

SoxF family members have been linked to arterio-venous specification events and human pathological conditions, but in contrast to Sox17 and Sox18, a detailed in vivo analysis of a Sox7 mutant model is still lacking. In this studywe generated zebrafish sox7 mutants to understand the role of Sox7 during vascular development. By in vivo imaging of transgenic zebrafish lines we show that sox7 mutan...

Genetic data indicate that abrogation of Notch-Rbpj or Wnt-β-catenin pathways results in the loss of the intestinal stem cells (ISCs). However, whether the effect of Notch is direct or due to the aberrant differentiation of the transit-amplifying cells into post-mitotic goblet cells is unknown. To address this issue,we havegenerated composite tamoxifen-inducible intestine-specific genetic mouse...

Epithelial invagination is a morphological process in which flat cell sheets transform into three-dimensional structures through bending of the tissue. It is accompanied by apical constriction, in which the apical cell surface is reduced in relation to the basal cell surface. Although much is known about the intra-cellular molecular machinery driving apical constriction and epithelial invaginat...

How adipocytes contribute to the physiological control of stem cells is a critical question towards understanding the link between obesity and multiple diseases, including cancers. Previous studies have revealed that adult stem cells are influenced by whole-body physiology through multiple diet-dependent factors. For example, nutrient-dependent pathways acting within the Drosophila ovary contro...

The prevalence of diabetes is increasing worldwide with the trend of patients being young and creating a significant burden on health systems, including reproductiveproblems,but theeffectsofdiabeteson embryo implantation are still poorly understood. Our study was to examine effects of diabetes on mouse embryo implantation, providing experimental basis for treating diabetes and its complications...