Telomere replication and its role in cellular senescence – TELOREP

The general goal of our project is to better understand the basic mechanisms of telomere replication and their role in cellular senescence. Using yeast and human models, our project should allow a better understanding of the network of interactions that allows the replication fork to progress through the telomeric chromatin, the processing events that occur at the end of two newly replicated telomeric chromatids and the role of telomere replication in cellular senescence. The comparison between yeast and human will allow to investigate the generality of our and to open new avenues in our understanding of telomere biology in other organisms. In a long term perspective, we aim the understanding of the integration of the genetic, epigenetic and cellular mechanisms that eukaryotes selected during evolution to preserve and replicate their linear chromosomes.