Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland
Epigenetic modulation of genome function
We are using mammalian stem cell models to ask how chromatin structure and DNA methylation influence gene regulation and genome organization. Towards this goal we combine molecular biology and functional genomic approaches. This enables us to monitor the epigenome and its dynamics in an unbiased way and to generate regulatory models from genome-wide datasets, which we test in cellular models by system perturbation and gene targeting.
Within EpiGeneSys we are particularly asking how DNA methylation states depend on the underlying sequence and the presence of transcription factor binding sites.