Arneet Saltzman

Campus

St. George (downtown)

CSB Appointment

Full

Research Areas

Animal Biology, Bioinformatics / Computational Biology, Cell Biology, Developmental Biology, Genetics / Genomics, Molecular Biology

Education

Research Fellow, Harvard Medical School, 2011-2017
Ph.D. University of Toronto, 2011
B.Sc. (Hons.) Queen’s University, 2003

Primary Undergraduate Department

Cell & Systems Biology

Graduate Programs

Cell & Systems Biology

Research Description

Most of the cells in an organism share the same genome sequence, yet they are able to carry out many distinct functions. Along with other layers of gene regulation, chromatin modification plays a key role in this cellular specialization. Our research focuses on histone modifications such as lysine methylation, and the proteins that recognize these modifications, which are often referred to as chromatin ‘readers’. Chromatin readers can recruit and act as part of diverse chromatin modifying protein complexes to mediate the silencing of many genes with important functions in cell proliferation and differentiation. We will use a combination of genetic, biochemical and genome-wide sequencing approaches to investigate the striking regulatory complexity of chromatin readers. Our research will contribute to a better understanding of how cells acquire and maintain different fates during development, how chromatin readers contribute to epigenetic inheritance, and how aberrant regulation of histone methylation contributes to the pathogenesis of several human diseases, including cancers.