Epigenetics: at the apex of innate immune memory

Prof. Musa M. Mhlanga is the chair of Cell Biology and heads the Laboratory for Epigenomics & Single Cell Biophysics at the Radboud Institute for Molecular Lifesciences. He did his undergraduate studies in France & the US and obtained his PhD in New York at NYU School of Medicine and The Rockefeller University. There, he worked on the development of molecular beacons for in vitro diagnostics and for the imaging of RNA in living cells with Fred R. Kramer & Sanjay Tyagi. Next, he did a Post Doctoral fellowship at the Institut Pasteur in Paris as a US National Science Foundation fellow. He worked on gene expression and nuclear organization with a focus on imaging of RNA and transcription. His laboratory works on the epigenome with an emphasis on the role of noncoding RNA in genomic architecture and gene regulation, using the immune system as a model. This includes fundamental mechanisms of gene regulation and extends to large scale clinical studies. His lab also works on single cell epigenomics and spatial transcriptomics, using multiple omics and microscopy approaches in translational models.