234 | Tobias Warnecke on Cellular Structure and Evolution

<p>Eukaryotic cells manage to pull off a number of remarkable feats. One is packing quite a long DNA molecule, with potentially billions of base pairs, into a tiny central nucleus. A key role is played by&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histone" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">histones</a>, proteins that provide scaffolding for DNA to wrap around. Histones also appear in archaea (one of the other domains of life), but until recently there wasn't evidence for them in bacteria (the final of the three domains). Todays guest, Tobias Warnecke, is an author on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2023/01/26/2023.01.26.525422.full.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a recent paper</a>&nbsp;that claims to provide such evidence. We discuss this new result, as well as background questions of how cells evolved and what their current structure can teach us about their histories.</p><p>S<em>upport Mindscape on&nbsp;</em><a href="https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Patreon</em></a><em>.</em></p><p>Tobias Warnecke received his Ph.D. in biology from the University of Bath. He is currently a Programme Leader and MRC Investigator at the London Institute of Medical Sciences. He is a co-author on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.26.525422v1.abstract" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">A. Hochner&nbsp;<em>et al</em>. (2023), "Histone-Organized Chromatin in Bacteria."</a></p><ul><li><a href="https://lms.mrc.ac.uk/research-group/molecular-systems/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Web page</a></li><li><a href="https://molsys.lms.mrc.ac.uk/Home.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Lab web site</a></li><li><a href="https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=8vrWOC0AAAAJ&amp;hl=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Google Scholar publications</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/tobias_warnecke?lang=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Twitter</a></li