Oncode Investigators Tineke Lenstra (NKI) and Jurgen Marteijn (Erasmus MC) have been awarded an ENW-M collaborative grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The ENW-M grants are intended for curiosity driven scientific research with impact. In this collaboration, they aim to understand what happens with Pol II and transcription when Pol II stalls at DNA damage sites.
Their collaboration started after meeting at the Oncode Annual Meeting. Their idea for the project was further crystalized during a visit to Erasmus MC. Understanding what happens with Pol II and transcription when Pol II stalls at DNA damage sites is a longstanding question, difficult to answer due to a lack of techniques to analyse single Pol II complexes.
“Via this collaboration we have now for the first time the opportunity to study the effects of DNA damage on transcription complexes at the single molecule level” says Marteijn.
Using Oncode funding support, they have developed a live-cell single-molecule imaging approach to measure the fate of individual Pol II molecules and have generated preliminary data that allowed them to jointly apply for the ENW-M grant.
“This grant will provide a boost for our exciting collaborative project and will expand the application of our single-molecule imaging techniques to understand the molecular events during DNA damage repair“ says Lenstra.
The results will provide more insight into the mechanisms of DNA damage-induced aging and cancer cell cytotoxicity during chemotherapy.