Mentor Areas
Innate Immunity, Immunology, Epigenetics, Molecular Biology
Description:
Innate Immune Chromatin Regulators as Mediators of Cellular Fidelity and Response to Environmental Cues
Chromatin regulators can regulate gene expression by altering chromatin structure (‘remodelers’), adding modifications (‘writers’), removing modifications (‘erasers’) and recognizing modifications (‘readers’). Mutations within chromatin regulators are significantly associated with inflammatory disease susceptibility. Our lab's active efforts have been in investigating chromatin regulators that instruct innate immune cell state and function, highlighting overlap where possible loss of regulatory control to environmental triggers leads to disease susceptibility.
Our lab is studying several chromatin readers (UHRF2, L3MBTL3 and KDM4C) with risk variants in different complex immune disorders such as asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, and systemic lupus erythematosus. Although a number of mutations in these chromatin regulators have been associated with various chronic immune mediated diseases, the function of these chromatin regulators in immune cells, and the consequence of disease associated SNPs are unknown. In addition, there is an additional challenge in assessing biological significance of these disease risk variants as they occur in non-coding regions. We utilize human and mouse immunology as well as epigenetic tools to assign function to these chromatin regulators, define cell-specific regulatory pathways contributing to inflammatory disease risk, and offer insights into novel therapeutic strategies.
The research projects will establish:
(i) Role of chromatin readers in innate immune identity and function in in vitro cell models
(ii) Molecular mechanisms of epigenetic control
(iii) Functional consequences of chromatin regulator disruption in in vivo mouse models
Preferred Qualifications
Undergraduates interested and/or have experience in Biology, Molecular Biology, Immunology, Genetics
Details:
Preferred Student Year
Second-Year, Junior, Senior
Academic Term
Fall, Spring, Summer
I prefer to have students start during the above term(s).Volunteer
Yes
Yes indicates that faculty are open to volunteers.Paid
No
Yes indicates that faculty are open to paying students they engage in their research, regardless of their work-study eligibility.Work Study
Yes
Yes indicates that faculty are open to hiring work-study-eligible students.