ZHMB-Kolloquium: The role of nuclear organization in transcription regulation

The role of nuclear organization in transcription regulation

Nadine Vastenhouw studies how the transcriptional machinery and chromatin template are brought together in time and space to robustly regulate transcription during development. After fertilization, animals go through cleavage divisions that transform the one-cell egg into a multicellular embryo. During this phase, the genome is inactive, and embryos rely on the products their mothers provided them. During the maternal to zygotic transition, developmental control is handed from maternally provided gene products to those synthesized from the zygotic genome. The onset of transcription is an excellent system to determine how all of the different variables that influence the decision to transcribe a gene or not come together to generate complex transcriptional programs. She will speak about her recent work related to the role of nuclear organization in transcription regulation.