CV Science

Salvatore Spicuglia PhD - Functional Genomics

Course and current status

Since Sep. 2011 Group leader. Technical Advances for Genomics and Clinics (TAGC). Marseille, France. Functional genomics of T cell differentiation and leukemia.

2005-2011 Senior Scientist (INSERM, CR1). CIML, Marseille, France.
Epigenetic regulation of lymphoid cell differentiation.

2003-2005 Post-doctoral fellow. H. Stunnenberg’s lab, University of Nijmegen and Nijmegen Center for Molecular Life Science, Department of Molecular Biology. Nijmegen, The Netherlands. In vivo function of basal transcription factor TFIIA.

1997-2002 Master & Ph.D. student. P. Ferrier’s lab, CIML, Marseille, France.
Control of V(D)J recombination by chromatin structure and enhancer elements.

Scientific summary

Salvatore Spicuglia has a long-standing interest in the fields of epigenetics and transcriptional regulation. He has set up and developed up-to-date genome-wide investigating approaches (MeDIP, ChIP-seq, FAIRE-seq, MNase-seq and RNAseq), along with state-of-the-art bioinformatics, in order to study epigenetics together with transcriptional regulation in normal developing and transformed T lymphocytes. In the past years, he has explored the dynamics of selected histone modifications and transcription factors during early T cell development in vivo, using ChIP assays coupled to either microarrays or HTS technologies. His work evidenced a previously unappreciated combinatorial of histone methylations associated to the activity of developmentally regulated enhancers. and highlighted an epigenetic signature linked to the regulation of tissue specific gene expression, suggesting a direct connection between chromatin landscapes and distinct modes of transcriptional regulation. In parallel, he has made significant effort in implementing collaborative projects with clinicians, aiming to apply these techniques to the definition of epigenetic signatures (both DNA methylation and histone modifications) in large collections of human lymphoma and leukemia primary cell samples.

Current Research interests:

1. Chromatin dynamics in developing T-cells using genome-wide approaches

2. Control of tissue-specific gene expression in normal and leukemic T cells

3. Identification of long non-coding RNAs

4. Epigenetic characterization of cancer cells using genome-wide approaches