Infrastructure for Circular DNA Genomics and Microbiome Studies

Eukaryotic genomes were long thought to be stably organized into linear chromosomes. Though extrachromosomal circular DNA (eccDNA) has been known for many years to exist in organisms such as yeast and humans, they were considered rare. However, we have made the ground-breaking discovery that eccDNA is abundant and produced from all parts of the genome in several eukaryotes. Our findings are possible because of a technological breakthrough where we combined hypersensitive purification of circular DNA with sequencing and advanced bioinformatics tools. These findings and technologies allows my research group to be among the leading teams in the emerging field of circular DNA. With the aid of the Carlsberg Foundation grant we will address a number of fundamental and medically related questions.