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Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Pathology and Laboratory Medicine  :  Faculty

Faculty

J Zeitlinger Julia Zeitlinger, PhD

Assistant Investigator, Stowers Institute for Medical Research
Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Division of Cancer & Developmental Biology

Ph.D.: 1999, European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany
Postdoctoral: Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, M.I.T

Email: jbz @ stowers-institute.org
Zeitlinger Lab web site

Publications: Click here for list of publication from PubMed

Ph.D. students are welcome. Contact me for more info.


Transcriptional Regulatory Networks During Drosophila Development

diagramHuman disease is frequently associated with aberrant signal transduction components, DNA-binding transcription factors and chromatin modifying enzymes, yet how these components regulate specific biological outcomes is largely unknown. There is therefore a critical need to understand how regulatory proteins affect global gene expression and cellular behavior in a context-specific manner.

The long-term goal of our research is to identify predictive rules by which gene expression programs are established in an organism and apply them to human disease. It is known that gene expression programs are specified by signal transduction pathways that are activated by signals from neighboring cells during development. How these signal transduction pathways regulate gene expression is highly context-dependent. Based on current knowledge, gene regulation depends on two principles, combinatorial regulation and (epigenetic) cellular memory. We are studying both principles by combining the power of classical Drosophila genetics with that of state-of-the-art genomics techniques.

diagramOne of the techniques frequently used in the lab to globally map protein-DNA interactions is ChIP-chip and ChIP-seq analysis. In this technique, chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is performed using antibodies against a DNA-binding protein. The DNA to which the protein is bound is then identified by either microarray analysis (chip) or sequencing (seq). For example, we have applied this technique to study the dorso-ventral axis specification in Drosophila, which involves the transcription factors Dorsal, Twist and Snail.