Tracy’s work building models of DNA double strand break susceptibility finally emerges from review this week in Genome Biology. She shows that it is possible to make remarkably accurate models, predicting the frequency of breakage in a given region of the genome, using a variety of underlying chromatin features. These predicted frequencies from these models can then be compared (above) to the rates of breakage seen in human tumour data, and identify regions that may be important to tumourigenesis. This work bridges the fields of genome instability, chromatin structure and cancer genomics – which is pretty cool, until you attempt to find suitably eclectic reviewers! It’s also the first manuscript to come out of our ongoing collaboration with our friends in the Crosetto group at the Karolinska.
The Semple Lab 