GROUP LEADER:
Luciano Di Croce (ICREA Research Professor)
POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS:
Pedro Vizan, Enrique Blanco, Sergio Aranda, Valerio Di Carlo, Malte Beringer (until June 2017)
PhD STUDENTS:
Marc Garcia, Anna Alcaine, Paul Chammas, Mar Gonzales, Isabel Espejo (since September 2017), Ivano Moncavini (since October), Alexandra Santanach (until September 2017)
TECHNICIANS:
Arantxa Gutierrez, Cecilia Ballare
MASTER STUDENTS:
Claire Caillot (January-June)
Embryonic stem (ES) cells have the potential to both renew indefinitely in culture, and to differentiate into every cell type of the body. Both processes, self-renewal and differentiation, are governed by transcriptional activation or repression of the relevant genes. Polycomb and Trithorx proteins play a key role in regulating ES cell fate and differentiation. Mechanistically, they function within multiprotein complexes, which repress or activate gene transcription. On the other hand, both complexes are often misregulated in human diseases.
Therefore, the research in our group is focused on the characterization of the role of key components of the Polycomb and Trithorx complex (including novel interactors) in regulating gene expression, stem cell differentiation, chromatin topology and carcinogenesis processes.
Santanach A, Blanco E, Jiang H, Molloy KR, Sansó M, LaCava J, Morey L, & Di Croce L.
“The Polycomb group protein CBX6 is an essential regulator of embryonic stem cell identity.”
Nature Communications, 8:1235 (2017).
Schuettengruber B, Bourbon HM, Di Croce L* & Cavalli G.*
“Genome Regulation by Polycomb and Trithorax.”
Cell, 171, 34-57 (2017). * = co-corresponding authors
Stevens TJ, Lando D, Basu S, Atkinson LP, Cao Y, Lee SF, Leeb M, Wohlfahrt KJ, Boucher W, O’Shaughnessy-Kirwan A, Cramard J, Faure AJ, Ralser M, Blanco E, Morey L, Sansó M, Palayret MG, Lehner B, Di Croce L, Wutz A, Hendrich B, Klenerman D, Laue ED.
“3D structures of individual mammalian genomes studied by single-cell Hi-C.”
Nature, 544:59-64 (2017).
Hu D, Gao X, Cao K, Morgan MA, Mas G, Smith ER, Volk AG, Bartom ET, Crispino JD, Di Croce L, Shilatifard A.
“Not All H3K4 Methylations Are Created Equal: Mll2/COMPASS Dependency in Primordial Germ Cell Specification.”
Molecular Cell, 65:460-75(2017).
Pascual G, Avgustinova A, Mejetta S, Martín M, Castellanos A, Attolini CS, Berenguer A, Prats N, Toll A, Hueto JA, Bescós C, Di Croce L, Benitah SA.
“Targeting metastasis stem cells through the fatty acid receptor CD36.”
Nature, 541, 41-45 (2017).
