Stanford

Joanna Wysocka

The biological question that is driving our research in the long-term is understanding the epigenetic basis of vertebrate development and differentiation. Although each cell of a multicellular organism is a progeny of a single zygote, and shares the same genetic information with every other cell, cells differentiate to specialized forms such as skin, muscle or nervous cells. Our research focuses on understanding the mechanistic basis by which covalent histone modifications regulate gene expression patterns during vertebrate development and differentiation. A second major area of our interest involves chromatin regulation in embryonic stem cells (ESCs), molecular basis of pluripotency and role of histone methyltransferases in cell fate decisions.

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News Releases

Face facts: Researchers discover long-ignored DNA segments that coordinate early face development

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Recent Publications

Epigenomic Annotation of Enhancers Predicts Transcriptional Regulators of Human Neural Crest. Rada-Iglesias A, Bajpai R, Prescott S, Brugmann SA, Swigut T, Wysocka J. Cell Stem Cell. 2012

A unique chromatin signature uncovers early developmental enhancers in humans. Rada-Iglesias A, Bajpai R, Swigut T, Brugmann SA, Flynn RA, Wysocka J. Nature. 2011; 470 (7333): 279-83

Sequence-specific regulator Prdm14 safeguards mouse ESCs from entering extraembryonic endoderm fates. Ma Z, Swigut T, Valouev A, Rada-Iglesias A, Wysocka J. Nat Struct Mol Biol. 2011; 18 (2): 120-7

CHD7 cooperates with PBAF to control multipotent neural crest formation. Bajpai R, Chen DA, Rada-Iglesias A, Zhang J, Xiong Y, Helms J, Chang CP, Zhao Y, Swigut T, Wysocka J. Nature. 2010; 463 (7283): 958-62

Chromatin remodelling factor Mll1 is essential for neurogenesis from postnatal neural stem cells. Lim DA, Huang YC, Swigut T, Mirick AL, Garcia-Verdugo JM, Wysocka J, Ernst P, Alvarez-Buylla A. Nature. 2009; 458 (7237): 529-33

Jarid2/Jumonji coordinates control of PRC2 enzymatic activity and target gene occupancy in pluripotent cells. Peng JC, Valouev A, Swigut T, Zhang J, Zhao Y, Sidow A, Wysocka J. Cell. 2009; 139 (7): 1290-302

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Video

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LAB MEMBERS

Joanna Wysocka, PhD, Principal Investigator
Ziyang Ma, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow
Kazutaka Murata, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow
Eliezer Calo-Velazquez, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow
Christa Buecker, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow
Tiago Faia, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow
Tomasz Pawel Swigut, PhD, Senior Scientist
Edward Grow, Graduate Student
Sara Prescott, Graduate Student
Rachel Greenberg, Graduate Student
Rajini Srinivasan, Life Science Research Assistant

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Contact Info

Institute for Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine
265 Campus Drive, Rm. G3145
Stanford, California 94305

wysocka@stanford.edu

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