LMU Munich — Fac­ulty of Bio­logy — Depart­ment Human Bio­logy and BioImaging

Epi­gen­et­ics deals with molecu­lar mech­an­isms that lead to the cell-spe­cif­ic read­ing of genet­ic inform­a­tion. They cause the major­ity of genes in somat­ic cells to be per­man­ently down­reg­u­lated or silenced dur­ing embryon­ic devel­op­ment and only a smal­ler frac­tion to be expressed.

Our group is par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in the func­tion and reg­u­la­tion of DNA methyl­a­tion in mam­mali­an cells. A major focus is on the com­plex inter­play between the DNA methyl­trans­ferases involved (Dnmt1/​Dnmt3a 3b) and the factors inter­act­ing with them.

We draw on a broad spec­trum of ana­lyses com­bin­ing clas­sic­al bio­chem­ic­al, molecu­lar-genet­ic and cell bio­lo­gic­al meth­ods. We are con­stantly expand­ing these with nov­el meth­ods and approaches. Tech­niques developed or newly estab­lished in the group include nanobody/​chromobody tech­no­logy, DNA methyl­trans­ferase activ­ity determ­in­a­tion in vitro and in vivo, fluor­es­cence-two/­three-hybrid (F2H/F3H) assay and math­em­at­ic­al mod­el­ing of FRAP exper­i­ments to char­ac­ter­ize pro­tein inter­ac­tions and dynam­ics in liv­ing cells, and super-res­ol­u­tion 3D micro­scopy with 3‑dimensional struc­tured illu­min­a­tion (3D-SIM).