Scientific focus:
Highly developed organisms rely on an intricate genetic program that allows them to differentiate from stem cells into genetically largely uniform but epigenetically highly diverse set of cell types. The latter establish the necessary structures and perform the different functions in the developing or adult organism. This fundamental biological problem is highly relevant to medicine. For example, erroneous changes related or mirrored in the gene program can alter the status of defined cell such that it adopts a pathological state. In the worst case such a change may be irreversible, leading for example to persistent inflammation or cellular transformation.
Historically, we have taken a biochemical approach to first isolate the protein involved in the control of gene transcription. We subsequently begun to study them on intact genes inside cells and ultimately in mouse models. One well studied result of this line of investigations is the transcription cofactor PC4, a small protein with unique structural and biological properties.We continue to apply biochemical methods to study the molecular processes in transcription (Schlüsche et al., 2007). However, the applied method spectrum in the lab is broad ranging from standard molecular and cell biology techniques (Mortusewicz et al., 2008) to mouse genetics (Li, Roth et al., unpublished).
