Project 1 - Exploration of the three-dimensional chromatin structure and gene expression in quiescent cells Gene expression is a crucial process that include transcription, RNA splicing, translation, post-translational modification and is influenced by environment, external signals and chromatin composition. Importantly, chromatin structure can orchestrate gene expression via genome architecture by forming loops, domains and compartments13. In this part, we aim to study the difference of three-dimensional chromatin structure and gene expression between vegetative and quiescent cells in S. pombe. Project 2 – Study of the left telomere of chromosome II in quiescence Telomere, a specific DNA-protein structure found at both end of each chromosome, protect genome from nucleolytic degradation, unnecessary recombination, repair, and interchromosomal fusion. Telomeres therefore play a vital role in preserving the information of the genome. As a normal cellular process, a small portion of telomeric DNA is lost with each cell division. When telomere length reaches a critical limit, the cell undergoes senescence or apoptosis therefore telomere length is regarded as a biological clock to determine the lifespan of a cell and an organism15,16. In fission yeast, telomere is an important component of the constitutive chromatins medicated by chromatin modifications and the RNAi machinery17. Based on our preliminary result in Hi-C of project 1, we noticed that most of TADs in quiescent cells after 24h of starvation have disappeared except subtelomeric region of telomere 2 (Tel2L) (Figure 4). We are interested to investigate in detail the function of this particular region in project 2.