U.S.-Netherlands Cooperative Research on the Comparison of Meiotic Chromosome Metabolism in Rats and Yeast

该奖项支持哈佛学院的Nancy Kleckner教授和她的研究生Ruth Padmore医学博士与荷兰瓦赫宁根农业大学遗传学系的Christa Heyting教授和其他人在分子生物学研究方面的合作。这两个实验室都对了解减数分裂过程中染色体配对和重组的机制和关系感兴趣。然而，这两个实验室使用了非常不同的方法和非常不同的生物进行分析，酵母和老鼠。合作的总体科学目标是对这两种生物感兴趣的过程进行比较分析。这两个研究小组在酵母分子遗传学和哺乳动物细胞生物学和细胞遗传学方面的互补技能将加速两个实验室的进展。减数分裂对有性生殖至关重要。减数分裂最重要的方面之一是同源染色体之间的配对和重组。这项合作的总体目标是酵母和高级真核生物中这些过程的功能比较。大多数关于减数分裂的遗传学研究都是用酵母完成的，而大多数关于减数分裂的细胞学研究都是用哺乳动物完成的。把这两种研究联系起来很重要，但却很困难。

This award supports Professor Nancy Kleckner of Harvard College and her graduate student, Ruth Padmore, M.D., to collaborate in molecular biology research with Professor Christa Heyting and others of the Department of Genetics of the Agricultural University of Wageningen, The Netherlands. Both of these laboratories are interested in understanding the mechanisms of and relationships between chromosome pairing and recombination during meiosis. However the two laboratories have used very different approaches and very different organisms for their analysis, yeast and rats. The overall scientific goal of the collaboration is a comparative analysis of the processes of interest in the two organisms. The complementary skills of the two research groups in yeast molecular genetics and mammalian cell biology and cytogenetics should accelerate progress in both laboratories. Meiosis is essential for sexual reproduction. One of the most important aspects of meiosis is the pairing of and recombination between homologous chromosomes. The general goal of this collaboration is a functional comparison of these processes in yeast and higher eukaryotes. Most work on the genetics of meiosis has been done with yeast, while most work on the cytology of meiosis is done with mammals. It is important but difficult to relate the two lines of research.