Cooperative Extension Service Communications and Technology Department 3354 1000 E. University Ave. Laramie, WY 82071 (307) 766-6342 • fax (307) 766-3998 • www.uwyo.edu

 

For Immediate Release

Story contact:

Jordanka Zlatanova: (307) 766-3721

 

 

Contact: Steven L. Miller, Senior Editor

Phone: (307) 766-6342

E-mail: slmiller@uwyo.edu

Archived News Site www.uwyo.edu/agadmin/news/news.htm

 

Date: April 6, 2005

Head of UW molecular biology gives keynote address at international meeting

The sole speaker from the United States at the Chromosomes at the Nano-Era international meeting in Tokyo was the head of the Department of Molecular Biology in the University of Wyoming’s College of Agriculture.
Professor Jordanka Zlatanova gave the keynote address at the meeting in Tokyo March 9-10.
The conference brought together physicists, biologists, mathematicians, computer scientists, bioinformaticists, and researchers from related fields trying to unravel chromatin structure in chromosomes.
Zlatanova presented “Chromatin Dynamics Studied by Single-Molecule Approaches.”
Chromatin is the portion of the cell nucleus that contains all of the DNA of the nucleus in animal or plant cells. When a cell divides, chromatin compacts in distinct chromosomes that duplicate, and then separate, with an equal part of each set of chromosomes traveling to each new cell.

Six years ago, the Japanese government provided money for a consortium to use state-of-the-art technology to study chromosomal dynamics at the molecular level.

Zlatanova’s department utilizes instruments that allow researchers to look at the fluorescence of individual molecules.

“This was unheard of five years ago,” said Zlatanova. “We look at each individual molecule as part of the complex and how they interact with each other. The structure of chromosomes is something we must understand.”

Zlatanova predicts whoever resolves the structure will receive a Nobel Prize.

Zlatanova also presented a seminar about UW research to the Osaka University, Department of Biotechnology, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka, Japan.

UW will begin collaboration with Osaka University’s Laboratory of Dynamic Cell Biology in the Department of Biology, with an exchange of graduate and post-doctoral students. A graduate student from Osaka will begin at UW in June.

            On the Web: http://www.uwyo.edu/MolecBio/Zlatanova.html

            http://www.uwyo.edu/UWmolecbio/Molec_Research.asp

 

###