Justin Demmerle, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr. Justin Demmerle is interested in how cells regulate their genomes in the spatial dimension, and how gene expression is controlled by 3D genome organization. He earned a B.A. in Molecular Biology from the University of Chicago, where he studied the role of the nuclear lamina in regulating gene positioning and expression in the labs of Dr. Harinder Singh and Dr. James Holaska. He then worked with Dr. Lothar Schermelleh at the University of Oxford to refine super-resolution 3D-SIM imaging techniques for studying the epigenetic organization of mammalian nuclei. Justin was awarded the NIH-OxCam PhD scholarship in 2014 under the mentorship of Dr. Schermelleh at Oxford and Dr. Todd Macfarlan at the NICHD, National Institutes of Health. In this collaborative project he applied advanced imaging and sequencing-based approaches to study chromatin architecture in motor neuron development, focusing on the role of the chromatin integrator protein LDB1 in regulating 3D genome organization and transcription factor function. Dr. Demmerle earned his DPhil from Oxford in 2020, and as a T32-funded postdoctoral fellow in the Cai Lab will focus on how the chromatin integrator protein YAP and biomolecular condensate formation regulates transcription and 3D genome organization in both normal and cancerous cell growth.