An ambitious EC-funded research initiative on epigenetics advancing towards systems biology

His group studies transcription regulation in embryo development. Their research interests include the function of promoter recognition proteins in regulating differential gene expression during vertebrate embryo development and comparative/functional genomic analysis of cis-regulatory elements. They develop high throughput approaches to study transcriptional regulators in the zebrafish embryo model system. They have been studying transcription initiation using the maternal to zygotic transition during vertebrate development as a model system and contributed to elucidation of developmental specific functions of general transcription factors such as the TBP family proteins. More recently they have been studying the links between transcription initiation and epigenetic regulation in zebrafish embryos in collaboration with Prof. B. Turner and Dr L. O'Neill (U Bham). The Mueller group in collaboration with B. Lenhard (ICL), P. Carninci (Riken, Yokohama) and U. Strahle (KIT, Karlsruhe) formed the Zeprome consortium to characterize the maternal-zygotic transition by high resolution analysis of the promoterome during vertebrate development. His group currently consists of 4 post docs, 1 technician and 3 PhD students. Their research is funded by various projects of the 7th Framework programme of the European Union, CBP consortium of NIH and the Myrovlytis Trust.