In this week's Science, a trio of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center researchers publishes details of meiotic DNA double-strand break resection, a central and conserved feature of recombination that remains poorly understood. By mapping resection endpoints genome-wide at high resolution in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, they discovered that full-length resection requires Exo1 exonuclease and the DSB-responsive kinase Tel1, but not Sgs1 helicase. They also found that Tel1 promotes efficient resection initiation, and that resection endpoints "display pronounced heterogeneity between genomic loci that reflects a tendency for nucleosomes to block Exo1, yet Exo1 also appears to digest chromatin with high processivity and at rates similar to naked DNA in vitro."
Meanwhile, in Science Translational Medicine, Genetic Alliance Founder and President Sharon Terry discusses how the Precision Medicine Initiative and the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network are ushering in a new era in which study participants are also now research partners. These two programs, she argues, will "spur the advancements we seek only if we, the people, take advantage of these unprecedented opportunities and act with boldness to overcome myriad misaligned incentives, business interests, and general inertia against change."