About this episode

Alon Goren discusses his research on genomic technology and chromatin biology, focusing on epigenome regulation and reproducibility in scientific results.

In this episode we speak with Alon Goren from UC San Diego about his work at the intersection of genomic technology development and chromatin biology. We discuss how his lab studies how the epigenome is regulated, how disruption of that regulation contributes to disease, and how technology can be improved to make results more robust and reproducible. We talk about his early interest in biology, how that developed through medical research training, and how a molecular biology lab shaped the direction of his career. He explains how curiosity about how cells and organisms work led him toward genomics and chromatin research. We then discuss several methods from his career, including early direct sequencing approaches for small amounts of DNA and RNA, ChIP-based methods for chromatin regulators, and work on improving ChIP-seq workflows. He explains why antibody choice matters, why monoclonal antibodies can improve reproducibility, and how automation helped scale the process. We also cover his work on spike-in normalization, including the risks of using exogenous chromatin incorrectly and the need for better safeguards in genome-wide comparisons. He describes a newer approach that uses…

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Guest: Alon Goren

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Organizations: UC San Diego

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