Prof. Laurie Ann Boyer

Stem cells are essential for metazoan development and for the maintenance of tissue homeostasis in the adult organism. Embryonic stem (ES) cells can be derived from the mammalian pre-implantation embryo and have enormous therapeutic potential because they can propagated in vitro while maintaining the capacity to give rise to all cell types in the body. A major challenge in biology is to understand how these undifferentiated cells execute the diverse gene expression programs that lead to cellular specification. Chromatin organization is a fundamental mechanism used by all eukaryotes to compartmentalize the genome into functional domains in order to interpret the vast amount of genetic information encoded within the genome. The overall goal of the lab is to understand how chromatin structure influences gene expression programs and ultimately cell fate and how failure to establish proper chromatin states can contribute to disease.

To address these questions, we use a combination of genomic, genetic, biochemical and cell biological tools to precisely characterize the factors involved in regulating chromatin structure, to determine how these factors are recruited to genomic sites, and to investigate how these different regulatory pathways cooperate to organize the genome. We are particularly interested in how specific chromosomal domains are assembled and propagated in ES cells, adult stem cells, and somatic cells. Discovering how gene expression programs are regulated is required to improve our understanding of development and disease, and for realizing the therapeutic potential of stem cells.