Title：Dosage compensation, the X-factor unveiled

Reporter：  Prof. Joost Gribnau　　

Time：16/08/2018（Thursday） 15:30

Place：Room 1-24-26, Xinan Campus

Introduction：

Prof. Joost Gribnau, Professor, the head of department of Developmental Biology, Erasmus MC, the director of the Director of the Erasmus MC IPS core facility and the founding member of Oncode Institute for Cancer Research. He was appointed extraordinary Professor (chair: Epigenetics), Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam. Concerning education background, he graduated in biochemistry at the University of Leiden, and received his Ph.D. in the department of Cell biology and Genetics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (1999) where he studied the regulation of beta globin gene expression and chromatin structure. His postdoctoral training was at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research / MIT (Cambridge, USA) in the laboratory of Prof. R. Jaenisch. He studied the role of replication timing and DNA methylation in genomic imprinting and X inactivation. He also developed a system, which allows monitoring of Xist RNA in living cells. In 2004 he started his own research group at the department of Cellbiology at the Erasmus MC and recently moved to the department of Reproduction and Development. He is recipient of 2004 VIDI and HFSP CDA grants. His main interests are X inactivation and genomic imprinting. His group is studying the role of Xist RNA and Xist RNA associated proteins at different stages of the X inactivation process. Most of his studies are published in the prestigious journals such as Journal of the Genome Res, Mol Psychiatry, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, Nature Comm etc.

Research directions

His research group is interested in research questions related to mechanisms involved in regulation of gene dosage and the consequences of gene dosage imbalances on cell homeostasis and disease. One of their main lines of research focusses on different aspects of the x-chromosome inactivation (xci) process. This process is mammalian specific and leads to one transcriptionally inactive x chromosome in every female cell, to compensate for dosage differences of x encoded genes between male and female cells.