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

Our group is interested in the molecular mechanisms that regulate the genome. To study such mechanisms, we employ the laws of physics and the rules of evolution to develop and apply computational methods for predicting the 3D structures of macromolecules and their complexes. In particular, we have recently developed a hybrid method (computational and experimental) to study chromosome conformation. Our method is based on the hypothesis that the spatial conformation of chromosomes can be determined by using comprehensive in vivo chromatin interaction data sets from 3C-based high-throughput technologies and light microscopy. The dataset are then integrated with our chromatin module of the Integrative Modeling Platform (IMP) to determine the higher-order chromatin folding of genomic domains and whole genomes.