Roles for nuclear organization in the maintenance of genome stability

Recent findings demonstrate that chromatin dynamics and nuclear organization are not only important for gene regulation but also for the maintenance of genome stability. Thanks to novel techniques that allow the visualization of specific chromatin domains in living cells, recent studies have demonstrated that the spatial dynamics of double-strand breaks and modifying enzymes can influence repair. The importance of the spatial organization in the repair of DNA damage has been confirmed by demonstrating that perturbation of nuclear organization can lead to gene amplifications, deletions, translocations and end-to-end telomere fusion events.