Alessandra Dall'Agnese's Research Focus
Alessandra is interested in elucidating the mechanism responsible for changes in nuclear architecture of embryonic and adult stem cells committed toward the skeletal muscle lineage or other alternative lineages, by employing techniques that detect modifications in three-dimensional structure of the chromatin during muscle differentiation. A special focus will be devoted to the optimization of protocols that can be applied to limited number of cells and set the experimental conditions for identifying chromatin-associated proteins or complexes implicated in the regulation of nuclear architecture of stem cells.
During muscle differentiation, the progression from multipotent progenitors to differentiated muscle cells is determined by the coordinated activation and repression of different subsets of genes. We hypothesize this is due, at least in part, to the generation of specific three-dimensional structural changes in the chromatin. Alessandra’s goal is to elucidate the 3D structure of the genome important for muscle differentiation.
Alessandra's project will allow most of the ongoing projects in Puri lab to move to another dimension and at the same time will introduce cutting-edge technologies of epigenetics and diffuse them among colleagues at Sanford-Burnham.