Regulation of 5-methylcytosine upon the transition from naive to primed pluripotency

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During human development, it is critical that certain genes be activated and inactivated at the right time. DNA methylation helps control this process. Certain enzymes called DNA methyltransferases chemically modify DNA to silence genes that need to be turned off for development to occur correctly. I will use stem cells to study how DNA methyltransferases are regulated during stages of early human development that would otherwise be impossible to study. My research will be directly relevant to certain diseases, such as cancer and ICF syndrome, where aberrations of DNA methylation occur and will more broadly help us understand how early human development is controlled. Additionally, I will train a Ph.D. student to become an expert in both bench science and computational analysis.