Christian Beisel is group leader at the ETH Zurich Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering in Basel (D-BSSE). He is also heading the Laboratory of Quantitative Genomics, a core research and service unit at D-BSSE, providing next generation sequencing technology. His main research area focuses on epigenetic gene regulation during development and disease. In particular he is interested in the molecular interplay of Polycomb and Trithorax group (PcG/TrxG) proteins, which are major determinants of the chromatin based (epigenetic) gene regulatory network, governing lineage commitment, maintenance and stem cell biology. By means of proteomics and functional genomics approaches his group aims at a deeper understanding of how the PcG/TrxG system is embedded within the cellular signalling network, how it responds to environmental cues and how gene expression states can be maintained or switched.
For additional details, see http://www.bsse.ethz.ch/people/cbeisel/index
Selected original publications
- Beisel C, Imhof A, Greene J, Kremmer E. and Sauer F. (2002). Histone methylation by the Drosophila epigenetic transcriptional regulator Ash1. Nature 419:857-862.
- Beisel C, Buness A, Roustan-Espinosa IM, Koch B, Schmitt S, Haas SA, Hild M, Katsuyama T. and Paro R. (2007). Comparing active and repressed expression states of genes controlled by the Polycomb/Trithorax group proteins. PNAS 104:16615-16620.
- Tariq M, Nussbaumer U, Chen Y, Beisel C. and Paro R. (2009). Trithorax requires Hsp90 for maintenance of active chromatin at sites of gene expression. PNAS 106:1157-1162.
Reviews related to stem cells
- Beisel* C. and Paro R. (2009). Dissection of gene regulatory networks in embryonic stem cells by means of high-throughput sequencing. Biological Chem. (ahead of print) DOI: 10.1515/BC.2009.116
*Corresponding author |