Wouter de Laat and Jeroen de Ridder have received a 600k$ National Institutes of Health (NIH) research grant to explore new dimensions of 3D genome organization. The grant is awarded in the context of the NIH 4D Nucleome Program, a large collaborative program aimed at unraveling the principles of nuclear organization in space and time and investigating how changes in nuclear organization affect normal development as well as various diseases.

New molecular biology and computational tools

De Laat and De Ridder will develop and apply Multi-Contact Chromatin Capture that exploits Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) long single molecule sequencing. Their work is expected to greatly enhance understanding of chromatin hub formation at the single allele level and should deliver valuable new molecular biology and computational tools for studying these under-explored dimensions of genome folding and functioning.

This project illustrates the scientific work of the Utrecht Bioinformatics Center. In this particular project two UBC partners combine their expertises: Hubrecht Institute and UMC Utrecht.