Denis Duboule received his PhD in mammalian embryology in 1984 in Geneva. He was a group leader in Strasbourg and then at the EMBL. In 1993, he was appointed Full Professor at the university of Geneva. Since 2006 he is also professor at the federal institute of technology (EPFL) in Lausanne and at the Collège de France in Paris since 2017.

His researches are in the fields of embryology, genetics and developmental genomics, in an evolutionnary context. He has received several scientific prizes and is member of the Academia Europea and of other academies including the French academy of Sciences, the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences USA.

Title of the talk: Hox clusters as a paradigm for long-range gene regulation during mammalian development and disease

During mammalian development, clustered Hox genes are controlled by enhancers acting over very long distances and localized within two distinct chromatin domains (TADs) flanking the genomic cluster on either side. In this talk, I shall first introduce the experimental system and then discuss the mechanisms and the logic underlying this complex bimodal regulatory strategy. Finally, the relevance of this meta-regulation in the proper making of our body structures will be discussed.

Host: Dan Larhammar