Me and my work

I came from Ukraine to do PhD in Attila’s lab in January 2014. I was very happy to successfully defend my thesis in April 2018.

My work has been focused on understanding the mechanisms underlying crossover formation in mammalian meiocytes. Crossovers are formed when homologous chromosomes reciprocally exchange DNA in the process of homologous recombination. Formation of at least one crossover per homologue pair ensures that chromosomes stay linked to each other until they are properly aligned in metaphase I. Meiotic recombination is initiated by introduction of numerous DNA double-strand breaks, whose number is around 10-fold higher than the number of resulting crossovers. The mechanisms underlying the selection of few crossovers out of many breaks, also called crossover designation, are still not fully understood. I study these processes by analysing an undescribed protein which turned out to be involved in crossover formation and designation.