Gerald Crabtree

Postdoctoral Advisees

Oliver Bell,  Emily Dykhuizen,  Diana Hargreaves,  Hamilton Courtney Hodges,  Andrew Koh,  Benjamin Stanton,  Wei Wu

Graduate & Fellowship Program Affiliations

• Cancer Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Immunology
• Chemical and Systems Biology

Internet Links

• Personal Web site

Current Research Interests

We are interested in the role of chromatin regulation in stem cells and have recently discovered a stem cell specific chromatin remodeling complex which plays an essential role in the formation and function of stem cells. We hope to understand how this complex functions over the genome of stem cells and its potential roles in the formation of induced pluripotent cells.

We are also interested in the mechanisms by which signals through Ca2+, calcineurin and NFATc proteins regulate development and morphogenesis in vertebrates. We hope to define the many roles of this pathway in development and disease. For example, this pathway is critical for immunologic function and transplant rejection, for the pathogenesis of diabetes, congential heart defects, Down Syndrome and perhaps osteoporesis. In addition to defining the full range of function of the pathway we hope to understand how the pathway might be regulated for therapeutic purposes.

Finally, we are developing new ways of making conditional alleles of mammalian genes using synthetic ligands that we hope will bring about a new fusion of biochemical and genetic approaches to understanding and controlling fundamental biologic processes.

Publications

• ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling in neural development. Yoo AS, Crabtree GR. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2009; 19 (2): 120-6
• An embryonic stem cell chromatin remodeling complex, esBAF, is an essential component of the core pluripotency transcriptional network. Ho L, Jothi R, Ronan JL, Cui K, Zhao K, Crabtree GR. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009; 106 (13): 5187-91
• An embryonic stem cell chromatin remodeling complex, esBAF, is essential for embryonic stem cell self-renewal and pluripotency. Ho L, Ronan JL, Wu J, Staahl BT, Chen L, Kuo A, Lessard J, Nesvizhskii AI, Ranish J, Crabtree GR. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009; 106 (13): 5181-6
• Calcineurin/NFAT signaling is required for neuregulin-regulated Schwann cell differentiation. Kao SC, Wu H, Xie J, Chang CP, Ranish JA, Graef IA, Crabtree GR. Science. 2009; 323 (5914): 651-4
• MicroRNA-mediated switching of chromatin-remodelling complexes in neural development. Yoo AS, Staahl BT, Chen L, Crabtree GR. Nature. 2009; 460 (7255): 642-6