Seminar “Function of the SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complex in plants”.

0n 02/02/2024, at 12:00 h, will take place in the auditorium of the Institute of Bioengineering, located in the Vinalopó building of the campus of Elche, the research conference entitled “Function of the SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complex in plants” within the program of seminars of the Master of Biotechnology and Bioengineering and the PhD Program in Bioengineering. The conference will be given by Dr. Javier Gallego Bartolomé (CSIC Senior Scientist), director of the Epigenetic Regulation of Gene Expression group of the Institute of Plant Molecular Biology (UPV/CSIC, Valencia), and is organized by Prof. José Manuel Pérez Pérez, Professor of Genetics and researcher at the Institute of Bioengineering of the UMH.

Understanding the function of a SWI/SNF chromatin remodeler in plants

Summary of the talk: Over millions of years, eukaryotes evolved from unicellular to multicellular organisms with increasingly complex genomes and sophisticated gene expression networks. Consequently, chromatin regulators evolved to support this increased complexity. The ATP-dependent chromatin remodelers of the SWI/SNF family are multiprotein complexes that modulate nucleosome positioning and appear under different configurations, performing distinct functions. A recent comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of the conservation of SWI/SNF subunits across eukaryotes allowed us to unravel an uncharacterized SWI/SNF complex in plants. The functional characterization of this remodeler by diverse genomics approaches indicates that it plays an important function in the control of nucleosome positioning and in the selection of the transcription initiation site over thousands of genes.

Javier Gallego-Bartolomé is an Agronomical Engineer who graduated from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. He pursued his doctoral studies in the laboratory of Miguel Blázquez and David Alabadí at the IBMCP in Valencia, where he developed a keen interest in the environmental regulation of gene expression. Subsequently, he relocated to California to conduct research in the Chory lab at the Salk Institute in San Diego and the Jacobsen lab at UCLA in Los Angeles, specializing in chromatin regulation and epigenome engineering. Since 2020, he has been leading a research team at the IBMCP in Valencia, initially as a Ramón y Cajal researcher and more recently as a CSIC researcher. His laboratory primarily focuses on the epigenetic regulation of gene expression, with a significant emphasis on chromatin remodeling. For more information visit: https://jagalbar.wixsite.com/gallego-bartolome.