Nuclear Architecture and Disease

In higher organisms, genomes are housed and function in the cell nucleus. While we have learnt a great deal in recent years about the sequence of genomes and the machinery that reads genome information, insights into how genomes function in the context of the architectural framework of the cell nucleus in a living cell are only now emerging. Several key concepts such as the existence of nuclear architectural proteins, the presence of distinct nuclear compartments, the non-random organization of genomes, and the dynamic nature of nuclear architecture are now recognized as driving genome function. Importantly, aberrations in nuclear architecture are now known to lead to diseases ranging from cancer to pre-mature aging. The elucidation of the cell biological properties of the genome will be essential to a full understanding of how genomes function both in health and disease.