Jonathan Lerner, Ph.D.

The possibility to generate cell types at will by somatic cell reprogramming holds great promises to heal and restore normal function in patients. However, current clinical applications are limited by the low efficiency of cell reprogramming, due to barriers safeguarding cellular identity.

One of the main safeguards impeding reprogramming is heterochromatin, which embeds reprogramming-inducing genes into a hypercompact, inaccessible and repressed chromatin structure. By investigating the interplay between transcription factors and heterochromatin, my lab aims to reveal novel pathways to overcome the heterochromatin barrier and improve the efficiency of cell reprogramming.

My preferred technical approach is microscopy, in particular imaging living cells expressing proteins of interest fused with fluorescent proteins.

Two types of projects are available to students in the lab:

-          “wet science” projects, hands-on projects in the lab, involving a range of techniques such as tissue-culture, molecular cloning, production of lentivirus, siRNA, DNA electrophoresis, western blot, …

-          In-silico, computational projects involving analysis of publicly available genomic data (ChIP-seq, RNA-seq, …), and statistical/mathematical modeling.