Histones variants and friends, a state of play for shaping chromatin and cell fate

Our interest in chromatin organization aims to understand how chromatin dynamics is established, propagated, maintained, and changed during development and in response to environmental cues. Errors in these processes can lead to mis-regulation of genome function and pathological outcomes, such as cancer.

Our general objective has been to dissect the mechanisms of chromatin assembly, from the basic structural unit, the nucleosome, up to higher-order nuclear structures. We have characterized key chaperones involved in nucleosome assembly and defined the dynamics of new histone incorporation in chromatin. Our findings have shed light on the fundamental issues of the dynamics, fate, and inheritance of histones, with their specific marks typical of particular chromatin domains.