New research project

The working groups of Prof. Albert Jeltsch (Institute of Biochemistry and Technical Biochemistry) and Prof. Nicole Radde (Institute of Stochastics and Applications) have cooperated for several years in the development and characterization of synthetic epigenetic switches that can detect transient environmental signals and store this information in the form of DNA methylation patterns in cells. In a continuation of this cooperation, which was funded by the DFG, the potential applicability of such artificial epigenetic circuits is to be further improved and their switching properties better understood. Methods of synthetic biochemistry and quantitative dynamic modeling are to be used to obtain a mechanistic understanding of the regulatory principles, information processing and storage by epigenetic circuits, to increase their performance and complexity, and to detect additional input signals.