Chemistry Graduate Program
Department of Chemistry
Faculty Advisor: David Schwartz
My research focus is discernment of genome wide DNA methylation patterns. DNA methylation, specifically CpG methylation, is important in genetic imprinting and long term gene silencing and aberrant methylation is a factor in many diseases, including cancer. The analytical tool I am using is the Optical Mapping platform, a system developed in the Laboratory for Molecular and Computational Genomics that uses single molecules of high molecular weight DNA for whole genome analysis. The goal of my research is to investigate the genome wide methylation pattern with respect to tissue type. Current work is the investigation of the methylation pattern of a mid-passage human stem cell line.
