“Dirty Dancing” with Maverick Chromosomes

The rhythm of life may beat far deeper than anyone previously thought. And it may gyrate and pulse in a way that rivals the sensuous choreography of “Dirty Dancing.”

In his Newark laboratory, David Kaback, a professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School, has captured the remarkable and never before seen undulations of “dancing chromosomes,” and his discovery may lead to way to prevent conditions like Down, Turner and Klinefelter’s syndrome as well as lend insight into the causes of first trimester spontaneous miscarriages.

In lectures to researchers and medical and graduate students, Kaback refers to his discovery as “Dirty Dancing,” which he also calls the “Mating Rites of Homologous Chromosomes.” His work on the process of chromosome pairing has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the journal Genetics and is funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

Kaback’s research focuses on meiosis, the specific type of division that takes place in sperm and egg cells. When most cells divide, the result is two new cells, each with 23 pairs of chromosomes. But during meiosis, sperm and egg cells are left with just 23 single chromosomes. When a sperm and egg cell combine, the single chromosomes become pairs.

In his laboratory, Kaback attaches green fluorescent protein tags to the chromosomes in yeast cells, which undergo meiosis in a fashion similar to humans. With the fluorescent tags activated, Kaback and his colleague Harry Scherthan from the Max Planck Institute and Bundeswahr Institute of Radiobiology in Germany are able to capture video of these chromosomes as they moved in spectacular fashion, first seemingly searching for each other during the process of pairing. Once joined, the chromosome pairs continue to move rapidly around the cell nucleus, with some individual “maverick” chromosomes breaking out of the large pack of chromosomes, not unlike dancing lovers in an elaborately choreographed movie.

To request an interview with David Kaback, Ph.D., please contact Jerry Carey, UMDNJ News Service, at 973-972-3000.

The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) is the nation’s largest free-standing public health sciences university with more than 5,600 students attending the state's three medical schools, its only dental school, a graduate school of biomedical sciences, a school of health related professions, a school of nursing and a school of public health on five campuses.

Annually, there are more than two million patient visits at UMDNJ facilities and faculty practices at campuses in Newark, New Brunswick/Piscataway, Scotch Plains, Camden and Stratford. UMDNJ operates University Hospital, a Level I Trauma Center in Newark, and University Behavioral HealthCare, a statewide mental health and addiction services network.