Our group studies how steroid hormones regulate gene activity during development. A key feature of our work is a genome-wide approach that helps us uncover gene regulation at the system level. Using the tools of systems biology, we aim to identify the molecular mechanisms that control coordinated gene expression.
In recent years, we have focused on understanding how steroids selectively act on tissue-specific regulatory elements of the genome. These mechanisms remain poorly understood in both humans and model organisms. To address this question, we use Drosophila melanogaster as a model.
In Drosophila, many tissue-specific developmental processes are controlled by a single steroid hormone, ecdysone. Our recent results suggest that the mechanism by which ecdysone activates tissue-specific genes differs from the mechanism it uses to activate developmental genes. We are currently searching for the transcription factors that enable ecdysone to selectively activate regulatory elements in different tissues.
