Condensin

Function

Condensin or structural maintenance of chromosome protein (SMC) is required for correctly package and divide the cell's genome. SMC uses ATP to affect conformational changes in DNA, to correct DNA compaction, organization and segregation^[1]. SMC exhibits the ability to super-coil DNA^[2]. SMC of E. coli is named MukB or Chromosome partition protein A. MukE and MukF are associated with MukB. SMC is found in species from bacteria to human. SMC and cohesin which share structural similarities, are essential for separting the genome into daughter cells during cell division. SMC reorganizes chromsomes into their compact mitotic structure while cohesin glues replicated sister chromatids together until they split at anaphase^[3].

Relevance

SMC plays important role in human disease and bacterial pathogenicity and its inhibitors are studied for therapeutic purposes^[4]. Mutations or removal of SMC subunits cause errors in chromosome segregation and likely cell death.

Structural highlights

SMC is a multisubunit complex. In vertebrates condensin complex is formed from the association of SMC2 and SMC4 subunits. SMC2 and SMC4 contain 3 domains: head domain forming an ATPase, a long coiled-coil region and a hinge domain which facilitates SMC2/SMC4 dimerization.