Student projects ('stage')

Students can participate in a any of a number of currentprojects, including functional and mechanistic studies of transcriptional regulation and promoters, epigenetic regulation of early development.

Techniques used in the lab

State-of-the-art techniques such as massive parallel sequencing of cDNA for transcriptome profiling, either in bulk (RNA-seq) or at the single cell level (scRNA-seq). In addition, deep sequencing of DNA obtained by chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP-seq) to analyze in vivo binding in the genome

Bioinformatics approaches for the analysis of large genomic data sets

Molecular Biology and biochemistry (subcloning, RNA and DNA isolation, quantitative PCR, Northern and Southern blotting, site-directed mutagenesis, RNA synthesis, CRISPR-Cas9, SDS-PAGE, Western blotting, immunoprecipitation)

Embryonic stem cells and animal experimental techniques (differentiation of ES cells, embryo micro-injection, experimental embryology, microscopy)

Links to disease

Research of differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells, for example to obtain cardiomyocytes, is important for in vitro disease modeling and for improving differentiation protocols.

Research of gene regulation during differentiation in vitro and in vertebrate embryos is important to understand pluripotency and to use stem cells in regenerative medicine.

Research of embryonic gene regulation is important to increase our understanding of congenital disease and of deregulation of growth and differentiation, such as in cancer.

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