Name: David Shechter

Position: Assistant Professor

Research Description:

My laboratory’s pri­mary inter­est is in deter­min­ing the role of egg his­tone vari­ants, his­tone chap­er­ones, and his­tone post-translational mod­i­fi­ca­tions in estab­lish­ing an embry­onic epi­ge­netic state. His­tones are the pri­mary pro­tein con­stituent of chro­matin, the phys­i­o­log­i­cal form of the eukary­otic genome.  Chro­matin is the actual sub­strate for all information-transactions that occur in the nucleus.  Infor­ma­tion encoded in the pro­teins of chro­matin can be con­sid­ered “epi­ge­netic infor­ma­tion” and is impor­tant for an over­all increase in the com­plex­ity of the genome with­out changes in under­ly­ing gene sequence.  Epi­ge­net­ics has clin­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance that has become more appar­ent, and is explic­itly con­nected with the process of pat­tern for­ma­tion cru­cial for proper devel­op­ment of meta­zoans.  Stem cells and eggs have gar­nered much recent atten­tion for their abil­ity to develop into any tis­sue and from the desire to see novel med­ical inter­ven­tions using patient-derived tis­sues to restore nor­mal func­tion to dis­eased tissue.

Lab Memberships

Shechter Lab (Principal Investigator/Director)

Contact Information

Address:
Department of Biochemistry
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Forchheimer 304
1300 Morris Park Ave
Bronx, NY
10461, USA

Web Page: http://www.einstein.yu.edu/faculty/11980/david-shechter/
Phone:  718-430-4120
General/Lab Phone:  718-430-4128