David Shechter, Ph.D.

Our research interests are focused on a bottom-up biochemical understanding of embryonic chromatin.   In particular, our interest is in determining the role of oocyte and egg histone post-translational modifications, histone variants, and histone storage chaperones in establishing an embryonic epigenetic state.

Epigenetics is a phenomenon important for an overall increase in the complexity of the genome without changes in gene sequence.  These molecular phenomena occur on chromatin, the complex of DNA, histones, and other proteins that constitute the physiological form of the genome.  Post-translational modifications of histones, and deposition of histone variants, establish a "histone code" of activation or repression of transcription and other chromatin-mediated transactions, and constitute a major part of the epigenome.  Extracts of oocytes and eggs of the frog Xenopus laevis are potent cell-free systems for the biochemical study of the establishment and writing of the epigenetic histone code on remodeled/reprogrammed somatic nuclei.

Epigenetic information is information content "on top of" the DNA-encoded genetic material.  In a sense, epigenetic information can be viewed as the landscape on which the dynamic usage of genetic information is encoded.

Please visit our website at www.shechterlab.org for more information on our research, protocols, lab members, etc.