An important objective of our laboratory is to reveal the epigenetic regulation of DNA repair in both meiotic and mitotic dividing cells. A good portion of our efforts are dedicated to elucidating the mechanisms by which chromatin remodeling complexes (SWI/SNF and NURD) and other chromatin characteristics, such as histone epigenetic marks, regulate DNA double-strand break formation and repair in the context of meiotic recombination hotspots and actively transcribed genomic areas in normal and cancer cells.
Because of the high complexity and variability of the mammalian genome, our experiments utilize genome-wide approaches to test our model and specific hypothesis in an unbiased way. We also combine powerful mouse genetics, imaging, biochemical, and cell-based experiments to study the effect of SWI/SNF and NURD activity loss in double-strand breaks and DNA damage signaling and repair.
