Savvas Kourtis

New Capabilities

Researcher at the Centre for Genomic Regulation

For decades, biologists treated the cell's energy-producing machinery and its DNA-reading machinery as separate systems operating in separate compartments. A study published March 6 in Nature Communications upends that assumption: more than 200 metabolic enzymes, many of them normally associated with energy production in mitochondria, are physically attached to human DNA inside the nucleus. About 7% of all proteins bound to chromatin turn out to be metabolic enzymes, forming what the researchers describe as a 'mini metabolism' within the nucleus itself.

Updated Mar 6