Assembly dynamics and structure-function analysis of an unusual kinetochore in the pathogenic basidiomycetous budding yeast cryptococcus neoformans

Abstract

Biologists have been fascinated with understanding the process of inheritance for over a century. Great leaps bolstered this quest in the late 19th and early 20th century with the discovery of DNA by Freidrich Meischer (Miescher, 1871) in 1869, followed by the naming of chromosomes in 1888 by HWG von Waldeyer-Hartz. Subsequently, Theodor Boveri (Boveri, 1904) and Walter Sutton (Sutton, 1902, 1903) proposed the “Chromosome theory of inheritance”. Thomas Morgan Hunt experimentally verified the chromosome theory by using fly genetics (Morgan, 1915). From these exciting beginnings, researchers have been able to work towards decoding the elegant choreography of chromosome segregation with the identification of the centromere, kinetochore, signaling events, and associated processes.