PhD Student
E-Mail: chadalna[at]hu-berlin.de
Tel: +49 30 2093 49753
Once established, different cell identities have to be maintained over many cell divisions. Key to this “memory” are the highly conserved Polycomb (PcG) and Trithorax (TrxG) group proteins – epigenetic regulators that work antagonistically to maintain gene expression patterns of many developmentally important genes. In Drosophila species, the PcG and TrxG proteins recognize their target genes though cis regulatory elements termed Polycomb/Trithorax response elements (PRE/TREs). A fundamental, yet unresolved, question in the research field concerns the sequence identity of PRE/TREs: while the PcG and TrxG proteins as well as their target genes are highly conserved between flies and mammals, the PRE/TREs are not. In the Ringrose lab, I work towards experimentally validating a subset of putative mammalian PREs in a high throughput manner in hopes of bringing us closer to answering the question: “what makes a (mammalian) PRE/TRE?”
