My scientific path has always followed one central curiosity — how epigenetic mechanisms shape human biology.
In 2012, I joined Linköping University in Sweden, where I established my independent research group to explore how DNA methylation and chromatin structure regulate human gene expression. Over time, my attention turned to one of the most striking examples of epigenetic regulation — X-chromosome inactivation (XCI), the process that equalizes gene dosage between males and females. My team now investigates how variations in XCI and other sex-chromosome-linked mechanisms may contribute to the marked differences in disease susceptibility between men and women.
This work, supported by an ERC Consolidator Grant, seeks to uncover why females exhibit greater resistance to some infections yet higher rates of autoimmune disease, tracing the answer back to the molecular choreography of the X chromosome.
Alongside this, my lab continues to study DNA methylation in human CD4⁺ T cells, illuminating how immune cells acquire and maintain their specialized identities, and how these processes can go awry in disease. Earlier, my group also exposed a fundamental flaw in a widely used epigenomic method (DIP-seq), revealing pervasive false positives that had shaped much of the field’s literature — a discovery that reinforced my commitment to methodological rigor and reproducibility.
My research on methylation patterns in cancer and immunity connects back to the same core idea: that disease is often not written in the DNA code itself, but in how that code is read, modified, and remembered.
Group Members
Sandra Hellberg
Shadi Jafari
Huan Zhang
Bjorn Gylemo
Ingeal Johansson
Svenja Löffert
Lisa Haglund
Engla Haglund
Klara Nilsson