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

Our lab is interested in dissecting the regulatory pathways and networks that control heterochromatin in the model system fission yeast (S. pombe). To identify systematically new epigenetic regulators, extensive genetic screens will be performed that account for two major challenges: redundancy in functional pathways and difficulties in detection of weak phenotypes. The isolated regulators will then be mapped to a comprehensive network by employing functional genetics. This quantitative approach is based on the epistasis mini-array profiling (E-MAP) method, which allows dissecting epistatic and parallel pathways and assigning them to functional groups. Finally, to address the dynamic changes that heterochromatin undergoes, we are developing a fluorescence-based silencing reporter systems, in which reporter gene expression can be directly measured at high precision and the single-cell level. This approach will gather information with high spatial and temporal resolution and may provide sufficiently dense quantitative data to perform stochastic analysis of heterochromatin dynamics.

People involved:
Dr. Ramón Ramos Barrales, Postdoc