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Job Dekker, PhD, and colleagues are studying how 3D genome structure influences gene expression, cellular function, development and disease. |
At the Center for 3D Structure and Physics of the Genome at UMass Medical School, Job Dekker, PhD, and colleagues are studying how 3D genome structure influences gene expression, cellular function, development and disease. Or, as reporter Carl Zimmer explains it in a new STAT “Science Happens” video, Dr. Dekker is “on the cutting edge of research into our inner origami.”
“Today, scientists focus on the ways that gene mutations cause diseases like cancer. But totally normal genes can still malfunction if they get folded in the wrong way,” Zimmer reports. “It’s possible that the research going on in Dekker’s lab may eventually reveal a hidden world of ‘folding diseases.’”
Dekker, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, professor of biochemistry & molecular pharmacology and co-director of the Program in Systems Biology, said once scientists understand how the genes are folded, it may allow them to fix “misfolding.”
Dekker is a pioneer in the study of the three-dimensional structure of the genome. He developed the chromosome conformation capture technologies, biochemical techniques for determining how DNA segments interact and are linked to one another, which are the heart of the “3C,” “5C,” “Hi-C” and “Micro-C” tools used by researchers worldwide to map the structure and organization of chromosomes inside cells.
Learn more about Dekker’s research here:
STAT: Everything you thought you knew about the shape of DNA is wrong
Related links on UMassMedNow:
Center for 3D Structure and Physics of the Genome established at UMMS
Job Dekker becomes seventh Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at UMass Medical School
