I joined at Cell Signalling lab in IRB Barcelona as pre-doctoral researcher with PREBIST fellowship since November in 2018. In prior to joining current laboratory, I worked in marketing team as an associate product manager for 2 years at a biotech company, QIAGEN GmbH, in Seoul, Korea. Main product portfolios in charge focused on companion diagnostics in oncology and NGS (Next Generation Sequencing) products for laboratory medicines. Key role of the position was to implement marketing plans of the portfolio to the market and manage the life cycle of the products. I conducted both of my degrees of bachelor’s and master’s in Dongguk University-Seoul, and master’s thesis was studying on identifying a novel marker that cause or induce epigenetic alteration on breast cancer.

Identification of novel histone marks required for the transcriptional stress response in yeast

Large sets of genes are repressed or induced by environmental stress and those are classified as ESR (environmental stress responsive) genes, and chromatin structure is essential for transcriptional regulation. Nucleosome dynamics and histone post-translational modifications (PTMs) can influence transcriptional initiation and elongation by modulating chromatin compaction and accessibility for regulatory proteins. We performed high-throughput screens to identify the yeast histone residues required for transcriptional reprogramming upon heat- and osmo-stress. This work offered a new comprehensive global map of the histone requirements for transcriptional reprogramming in response to stress, thus providing further insights into the biology of histone modification. As a proof of concept of the potential of these genetic screens performed, we characterized the function of the histone residues H4-T30 and H4-S47 in response to heat- and osmo-stress, respectively. The project aims to characterize other histone modifications and chromatin regulators, as well as define which pathways target these specific histone PTMs, that are important for efficient and rapid gene expression upon stress. These data will provide a better understanding of the chromatin context required for the establishment of certain histone modifications at specific genomic loci, which will help explain how and why such modifications are introduced at these loci as well as their biological relevance.