Thursday, 15 June, 2017

Ralf Jungmann becomes Allen Distinguished Investigator

Awards totaling $7.5 million given to pioneering researchers on the frontiers of epigenetics, aging and evolution by the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group

The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group today announced five new Allen Distinguished Investigator (ADI) awards to researchers conducting pioneering research in epigenetics, aging and evolution. CeNS member Ralf Jungmann together with Jan Ellenberg from EMBL will receive at $1.5 million over three years.

The Allen Distinguished Investigator program supports early-stage research with the potential to reinvent entire fields. Allen Distinguished Investigators are passionate thought leaders, explorers and innovators who seek world-changing breakthroughs. With grants typically between $1 million and $1.5 million each, the Frontiers Group provides these scientists with support to produce new directions in their respective fields.

Ellenberg and Jungmann will take an interdisciplinary approach combining chemical biology and biophysics to develop a novel technology to use barcoded fluorescent proteins to “paint” DNA sequences with specific epigenetic marks, and super-resolution microscopy to visualize those painted sequences at the level of single genes. With this tool, they will be able to map the complete 3D architecture of the epigenome in single human cells, and analyze how the structure changes during gene activation and repression.

More information about the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group