Joint Oncology/Institute of Reproductive and Developmental Biology (IRDB) Series, Thursday 23.09.21 @ 13.30, hosted by Professor Iain McNeish.

We are delighted to have Dr Jean-Baptiste Vannier, who is a Lecturer for Imperial College London at the Institute of Clinical Sciences. talking about his research interests.

His expertise is on molecular biology of telomere maintenance, especially in the context of replication of the telomeres and how specific factors are recruited transiently at these hard to replicate loci to facilitate DNA synthesis. His post-doctoral work culminated with the mechanistic understanding of RTEL1 helicase promoting telomere loop disassembly to prevent catastrophic telomere processing by the SLX1-SLX4 complex and loss of the telomere as a circle. He also uncovered a second function for RTEL1 in unwinding telomeric G-quadruplex DNA structures that is required to facilitate genome-wide and telomere replication (Vannier et al., Cell, 2012; Vannier et al., Science, 2013).