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Inheritance of Transcriptional Memory by Mitotic Bookmarking (Sheila Teves)

Episode 111

October 19, 2023

In this episode of the Epigenetics Podcast, we caught up with Sheila Teves from the University of British Columbia to talk about her work on the inheritance of transcriptional memory by mitotic bookmarking.

Early in her research career, Sheila Teves focused on the impact of nucleosomes on torsional stress and gene regulation. She also highlights the development of a genome-wide approach to measure torsional stress and its relationship to nucleosome dynamics and RNA polymerase regulation.

The conversation then shifts to her focus on transcriptional memory and mitotic bookmarking during her postdoc in the Tijan lab. She explores the concept of mitotic bookmarking, whereby certain transcription factors remain bound to their target sites during mitosis, facilitating efficient reactivation of transcription after cell division. She discusses her findings on the behavior of transcription factors on mitotic chromosomes, challenging the notion that they are excluded during mitosis. She also discusses the differences in binding behavior between the general transcription factor TBP and other transcription factors. Finally, the effect of formaldehyde fixation on the potential to find transcription factors bound to mitotic chromosomes is discussed.