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Francois Spitz, PhD

Our group is interested in understanding how the architecture of the genome contributes to the specificity and robustness of the gene expression programs that govern embryonic development and cell differentiation.

Vertebrate genomes contain hundreds of thousands of regulatory sequences that can influence the expression of genes sometimes located hundreds of kilobases away. Our main goal is to understand how the folding of the genome in specific domains and dynamic structures contributes to transform such a dispersed information into highly specific regulatory ensembles. We study as well how perturbations of these processes, notably due to chromosomal rearrangements, could lead to developmental or oncogenic pathologies, but may have also participated to animal evolution.