Our latest study using a Single Molecule Footprinting supports the idea that TFs vary widely in their sensitivity to nucleosomes and that genome access is TF specific and influenced by nucleosome position in the cell.
Francesca is a doctor now!
Francesca Masoni defended, last Thursday September the 5th, her thesis on chromatin remodelers and how they regulate opening of specific DNA loci and was awarded her PhD from the University of Basel. Congratulations Dottore Francesca, you did great!
Mario and Francesca's paper out in Nature Genetics
Our latest study investigates the effects of chromatin remodelers subcomplexes on chromatin landscape. Interestingly, we showed that the CTCF binding can be separated from its function as an insulator in nuclear organization and identify a specific role for NURF in mediating SNF2H localization and chromatin opening at bound CTCF sites.
Congratulations Dr. Lübke!
Marlena obtained his PhD from the University of Basel for her work on regulators of CpG island activity in mouse stem cells or in other words the question “How does CpG density contribute to promoter activity?”.
Well done Marlena
Congratulations Dr. Marco Pregnolato
Yesterday Marco obtained his PhD from the University of Basel for his work on the impact of nucleosomes on Transcription Factor binding and the role of co-factors on chromatin state and transcription. Congratulazioni dottore, looking forward for more exciting science!
Seba and Silvia's paper out in Nature Genetics
Our latest study explores mechanisms of transcriptional repression by DNA methylation. We show that combinatorial genetic deletions of all four proteins with functional MBDs in mouse embryonic stem cells, derived neurons or a human cell line do not reactivate genes or repeats with methylated promoters. These do, however, become activated by methylation-restricted TFs if DNA methylation is removed
Zip lines through the trees
The lab leaves Basel bright and early for a day of rope climbing, zip lines, free-falling and hiking. This year’s lab outing was in Wasserfallen, where after a short drive we geared up for a few hours in the rope park. Some challenging courses, fast zip lines and few braves souls even went for the free fall jumps…
After an extremely cheese-rich lunch, we burned some calories hiking through the forest close-by. This was brought you by the organizing committet (Noa&Francesca). Please head over to the “Events” page to check out some photos :)
Fearless Leslie
Welcome (back) Fumiya!
Fumiya is back and this time he’s here to stay!
After his internship in the lab he moved back to Kyoto to complete his studies and graduated in Medicine at Kyoto University. He will now start his PhD in our laboratory, we are thrilled to have him back and look forward to his contributions! Welcome :)
Sebastian is a doctor now!
Congratulations to Sebastian who brilliantly defended his thesis on DNA methylation-mediated mechanisms of gene regulation and was awarded his PhD from the University of Basel. Stay tuned for exciting findings from now Dr. Seba in this space!
Ralph and Lukas' paper out in Nature
Our latest study on CpG island regulation by a novel transcription factor is out in Nature. Using Single-molecule footprinting and interaction proteomics we identified BANP as the protein binding to the so far “orphan” CGCG motif and conferring strong upregulation of linked genes. BANP is an essential gene that opens chromatin upon and positions nucleosomes in CpG islands, but only when its motif is not DNA methylated.