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The correct duplication of the human genome is under the control of a spatiotemporal program that determines where and when replication forks start. This regulation thus mainly operates on replication start sites named replication origins. During the S-phase, about 50 000 origins fire in one human cell. However, the normal or perturbed progression of replication forks also strongly impacts on replication. Recently, several studies have put forward the role of a noncanonical DNA structure, the G-quadruplex, in the control of genome duplication. In this review, we describe the major impact of this structure on starting points and on the progression of replication forks., (© 2017 médecine/sciences – Inserm.)

Eukaryotic DNA replication starts at multiple sites distributed throughout the genome called origins of replication. The identification of the position of these origins in the genome, as well as the description of their sequence features and chromatin structure, have been the center of many studies over the last years. A handful of sophisticated methods has been developed to capture replication initiation events, to detect replication factors binding sites onto the chromatin and to computationally analyze these data at the genome scale. Yet, we remain far from fully understanding how these origins of replication are specified in the genome and how DNA replication initiation is regulated. The aim of this review is to provide the reader with a detailed and curated list of the latest findings regarding the nature of origins of replication in the human genome., (© 2017 médecine/sciences – Inserm.)