Plants have evolved a unique system in which the plant hormone auxin directly induces rapid degradation of the AUX/IAA family of transcription repressors by a specific form of the SCF E3 ubiquitin ligase. Other eukaryotes lack the auxin response but share the SCF degradation pathway, allowing us to transplant the auxin-inducible degron (AID) system into nonplant cells and use a small molecule to conditionally control protein stability. The AID system allowed rapid and reversible degradation of target proteins in response to auxin and enabled us to generate efficient conditional mutants of essential proteins in yeast as well as cell lines derived from chicken, mouse, hamster, monkey and human cells, thus offering a powerful tool to control protein expression and study protein function.

Mitotic chromosomes fold as compact arrays of chromatin loops. To identify the pathway of mitotic chromosome formation, we combined imaging and Hi-C of synchronous DT40 cell cultures with polymer simulations. We show that in prophase, the interphase organization is rapidly lost in a condensin-dependent manner and arrays of consecutive 60 kb loops are formed. During prometaphase ~80 kb inner loops are nested within ~400 kb outer loops. The loop array acquires a helical arrangement with consecutive loops emanating from a central spiral-staircase condensin scaffold. The size of helical turns progressively increases during prometaphase to ~12 Mb. Acute depletion of condensin I or II shows that nested loops form by differential action of the two condensins while condensin II is required for helical winding.

The components of the replisome that preserve genomic stability by controlling the progression of eukaryotic DNA replication forks are poorly understood. Here, we show that the GINS (go ichi ni san) complex allows the MCM (minichromosome maintenance) helicase to interact with key regulatory proteins in large replisome progression complexes (RPCs) that are assembled during initiation and disassembled at the end of S phase. RPC components include the essential initiation and elongation factor, Cdc45, the checkpoint mediator Mrc1, the Tof1-Csm3 complex that allows replication forks to pause at protein-DNA barriers, the histone chaperone FACT (facilitates chromatin transcription) and Ctf4, which helps to establish sister chromatid cohesion. RPCs also interact with Mcm10 and topoisomerase I. During initiation, GINS is essential for a specific subset of RPC proteins to interact with MCM. GINS is also important for the normal progression of DNA replication forks, and we show that it is required after initiation to maintain the association between MCM and Cdc45 within RPCs.