From Hibernate to chromosome topology

[mtbc]

I work in computational biology. Over the preceding fortnight at work we made time to focus on training each other. I previously mentioned having to work with Hibernate which maps Java objects to database rows. As part of the training on it I wrote a slide presentation answering people's questions about how OMERO uses Hibernate.

Once the training was finished I attended the annual symposium of our Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression where I noticed that when a presentation slide says Collect various mouse organs then the context is considerably outwith the mouse organ from Bagpuss (1974).

Through one of the GRE symposium talks I learned of decatenation by topoisomerase Ⅳ which I found interesting and cool. Topoisomerases solve topological problems. When our cells' DNA divides then after being duplicated the chromatids can be tangled. To segregate the copies for each of the nuclei it would help if one strand could pass through another. It turns out that enzymes can make a temporary cut in the DNA backbone, pass it over another strand then reconnect it. This is new to me and evokes the idea of tiny clever machines.