Cohesin acetylation speeds the replication fork

Cohesin inhibits the transcriptional machinery's interaction with and movement along chromatin, but does not prevent replication forks from duplicating the genome in S phase. Using single-molecule analysis, a replication complex is now found to affect acetylation of a subunit of cohesin, and this acetylation appears to be a central determinant of fork processivity. Loss of this regulatory mechanism leads to the spontaneous accrual of DNA damage.