Research

How does one fertilized cell become a human? What controls which genes are turned on in some cells, not in others? How can identical twins have different fingerprints? How can what occurs in your life be passed on to your offspring? Welcome to the field of epigenetics. Our lab focuses on the cellular processes that lead to these outcomes. Enzymes that regulate how your DNA is modified, or the histones undergo changes, or how non-coding RNA impacts these processes. The enzymes that carry out these changes occur in bacteria, plants and animals. Another focus is developing improved ways to use fluorescence to track proteins in cells, without relying on the currently used protein fusions.