Cheng-Fu Kao｜Institute of Cellular and Organismic Biology, Academia Sinica

• Chromatin structure and function

• Metabolism on chromatin dynamics and epigenetics

• Chromatin regulatory mechanisms in development and disease

The research in my laboratory centers on the molecular mechanisms that determine Chromatin structure and Cellular functions. The density and positioning of nucleosomes sterically determine the ability of cellular machinery to access the genome. Consequently, chromatin structure has a crucial role in diverse processes including activating or repressing transcription to control functions such as cell fate, the cell cycle, and DNA damage repair. A critical component of chromatin-mediated regulation uses histone post-translational modifications (PTMs), in which histones integrate cellular signals to compose chromatin-dependent functions. Given the regulatory role of chromatin for all DNA-templated processes, it is not surprising that many developmental syndromes are caused by mutations in the protein machinery that ‘writes’, ‘reads’ and ‘erases’ these histone marks and their regulations are frequently altered in cancer, and in many cases these mutations are oncogenic drivers or contributors to tumor progression.