The research in the laboratory is directed at understanding how chromatin structure affects gene regulation, and how gene expression affects genome stability.

Many diseases – chief among them cancer – exhibit genome instability, chromosome rearrangement, transposable element mobilizations, and hypermutation. The source of these instabilities is not generally know, but growing evidence links it to the ribosomal DNA and nucleolus, the subjects of study in the laboratory.

We use the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, whose unparalleled tools in genetics, genome manipulation, and epigenetics allows us to develop, test, and refine hypotheses relevant to human disease.