Date/Time/Location:

Thursday, April 24
11 am – 12 pm
Foege South Auditorium and Zoom Webinar

“The X factor: discovering new X chromosome features and determinants of health and disease“

Biography:

Dr. Disteche started her research career at the Université de Liège in Belgium where she obtained her PhD. She then joined the laboratory of Dr. S. Latt at Harvard Medical School as a post-doctoral fellow, prior to moving to the University of Washington as a faculty member in the Department of Pathology. Currently, she is a Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, and Adjunct Professor of Medicine (Medical Genetics).

Dr. Disteche’ s research is focused on using X chromosome inactivation as a model for understanding basic mechanisms of gene regulation and chromatin structure. A longstanding goal has been to understand the roles of long non-coding RNAs in nuclear structure and dosage compensation. Her group also investigates epigenetic mechanisms of escape from X inactivation, a process that leads to sex differences in gene expression.

Dr. Disteche has used many different approaches in her work to directly compare active and inactive X chromosomes in the same cell. She has applied single cell analysis methods to follow developmental changes in gene expression and chromatin structure during embryonic and adult tissue development to measure chromosome-specific (allelic) gene expression in specific cell types. In related work with collaborators, she and coworkers are now using human induced pluripotent stem cell lines with different numbers of sex chromosomes to identify genes important in diseases that disproportionately affect one sex, e.g., Alzheimer disease. Her lab and work have been mainly supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health.