Peter Becker: A Career in Chromatin — From ISWI to Dosage Compensation

About this episode

Peter Becker discusses his career in epigenetics, focusing on chromatin remodeling and dosage compensation.

In this episode of the Epigenetics Podcast, we talked with Peter Becker from the Biomedical Center Munich about his successful career in Epigenetics, where he discovered the chromatin remodeler ISWI and dosage compensation complex MOF. Dr. Becker shares thoughts about his postdoctoral work with Carl Wu, where he developed embryo extract systems for studying chromatin assembly and transcription. He explains how work on Drosophila extracts led to the purification of ATP-dependent remodeling factors, including ISWI-related complexes, and how these studies showed that such factors slide nucleosomes and help organize chromatin. We also cover his move to EMBL and later to Munich, where his lab expanded into dosage compensation in Drosophila. He describes work on the MSL complex targeting, MRE sequences, ROX RNA, DNA shape features, and how biochemical reconstitution was used to study how the complex recognizes the X chromosome. Finally, we discuss his later work on TIP-60 and histone acetylation, including acetylome studies, and his reflections on leadership roles at EMBL and on the use of the term epigenetics. He emphasizes that epigenetics should be understood as one layer among…

People in this episode

Guest: Peter Becker

Topics covered

• chromatin remodeling
• dosage compensation
• Drosophila
• epigenetics
• transcription
• ATP-dependent remodeling

Keywords

• chromatin
• ISWI
• MOF
• Drosophila
• ATP-dependent remodeling
• epigenetics
• histone acetylation

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Biomedical Center Munich, EMBL

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