Past Lab Members

Cigall discovered the mechanism underlying synovial sarcoma and with Courtney Hodges also showed that mutations in the BAF complex contribute to over 20% of all human malignancy.  She also developed a technique for recruiting the BAF complex to a endogenous gene and measuring the orderly sequence of biochemical events following recruitment.  She joined the faculty […]

Diana worked with Emily Dykhuizen to discover the mechanism of tumor suppression  by BAF complexes.  She and Emily found that BAF allowed Topisomerase II to bind DNA and function, thereby preventing DNA damage.  Diana joined the faculty at the Salk Institute.

Emily worked together with Diana Hargreaves to define the mechanism of tumor suppression by BAF complexes.  She also developed a screen for BAF inhibitors and found the first small molecule BAF complex inhibitor.  Emily joined the faculty of Purdue University.

Courtney used a combination of bioinformatics and biochemical studies to demonstrate that the mutations in the ATPasae domain of BAF that underlie human  malignancies and also neurodevelopmental  abnormalities function as dominant negatives.  He worked with Ben Stanton to find that these mutations effect the mobility of BAF or mSWI/SNF complexes over the genome in opposite […]

Ben came from Stuart Schreiber’s lab and worked with Cigall Kadoch in our lab to show that BAF complexes rapidly and reversibly ejected polycomb complexes and that mutations in the ATPase domain of SMARC4 or Brg prevented polycomb eviction.

Eric was interested in the way that domains of heterochromatin are formed and also dissolved as cells differentiate.  Surprisingly, he showed that BAF complexes work with Topo II to both resolve and form heterochromatin.

Sabina was interested in the role of CHD8 in autism.  CHD8 is a chromatin remodeler that is the most frequently mutated gene in autism.  Her studies with Chris Weber revealed that CHD8 negatively regulates expression of neuronal genes to maintain pluripotency and also during differentiation. Thus, CHD8 is essential for both the maintenance of pluripotency […]

Andrew was interested in the mechanism of action of the Aire protein and its role in the development of tolerance in the immune system.  He developed a system to rapidly and reversibly recruit it to a genomic locus and showed to everyone’s surprise that Aire was a transcriptional suppressor. He joined the faculty at the […]

Emma was a bioengineering graduate student that discovered a new means of controlling histone modifications.  Using the H3K79methylation as a model she found that nucleosome exchange was a major contributor to the dynamics of histone modifications over the genome.  Her studies showed that one must think of writers, readers, erasers and exchangers of histone modifications.  […]