Skip to main content

Danesh Moazed wants to understand the mechanisms involved in the formation, function, and inheritance of heterochromatin – tightly packed DNA, protein, and RNA found in the cell’s nucleus. Working primarily in yeast, Moazed and his team combine approaches from biochemistry and cell biology with proteomics and genomics to investigate how this “silent chromatin” exerts epigenetic control over gene transcription. They also study how gene transcription states are stably inherited and maintained over numerous cell divisions. Most recently, the team has begun to study the epigenetic memory mechanisms that maintain cell identity in mammals.