Robert K. McGinty, M.D., Ph.D.

Research

My lab will be exploring proteins that interact with the nucleosome—a nuclear structure made of DNA coiled around a core of proteins. The nucleosome is a lively signaling hub that regulates DNA-related processes from replication and repair to gene expression—all processes that go awry in cancer development. As a postdoc, I elucidated how a protein complex binds to the nucleosome and acts to block gene expression. To expand on this research, we will now perform novel techniques in chemical biology, biochemistry, and structural studies to screen for the nucleosome “interactome,” a network of proteins that interact with the nucleosome and modify gene expression. We aim to characterize how certain proteins recognize and bind to the nucleosome by carefully examining the architecture of the nucleosome surface. This work could potentially unearth key regulators of genome activity, especially those with pathogenic roles in human cancers.