Analyzing the sequences of DNA’s four chemical bases tells scientists about the fundamentals of how cells and organisms work. A new discovery by researchers proposes that the physical, geometric structure of DNA and how it is packaged in the cell nucleus—the “geometric code”—contains information critical to cellular function.
“It is not just the DNA sequence that matters,” said Kyle MacQuarrie, MD, PhD, Attending Physician in Pediatric Hematology, Oncology, and Stem Cell Transplantation at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and a co-first author of the hypothesis-generating study published in Advanced Science.
The multi-disciplinary team from Lurie Children’s and Northwestern University integrated imaging, modeling, and cellular/molecular biology to arrive at the conclusions, which have implications for multiple cellular processes including DNA mutations present in cancers, cellular “memory,” and evolution of organismal complexity, explained Dr. MacQuarrie, who is also Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “If we can understand these processes, we can try to control and engineer them.”
Dr. MacQuarrie added that future research will need to prove some of the hypotheses the team proposed, including work to understand how the cellular processes are altered (or not) in pediatric cancers. Specifically, researchers will conduct studies on controlling and influencing this code in pediatric tumor cells to improve therapies.
Pediatric research at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago is conducted through Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute.
