Luca Giorgetti

Group News

Sep 4, 2024
Video: Homing in on the role of chromatin organization in gene regulation
Jul 4, 2023
Luca Giorgetti elected as EMBO Member
Feb 8, 2023
Luca Giorgetti receives SNSF Consolidator Grant
Dec 5, 2022
Video: Mighty proteins keep DNA regions close for longer
Apr 13, 2022
Enhancer-promoter interactions — distance matters
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Luca Giorgetti

Chromosome structure and transcriptional regulation

To establish and maintain gene expression, cells require precise control of transcription. In mammals, this involves trans-acting factors, such as transcription factors binding to promoter-proximal regulatory sequences, as well as cis-acting elements such as cell-type specific enhancers, which are often located hundreds of kilobases away from their target promoters.

Functional interactions between distal enhancers and target promoters require them to be in close physical proximity, which in turn is linked to the way chromosomes fold in the three-dimensional space of the cell nucleus. To fully understand transcriptional regulation, it is therefore fundamental to quantitatively characterize chromosome conformation, including its cell-to-cell and temporal variability.

Chromosome conformation capture (3C)-based studies, which measure chromosomal contacts using chemical cross-linking, have revealed that mammalian chromosomes are partitioned into a complex hierarchy of interaction domains, at the heart of which lie topologically associating domains (TADs) and their substructures. Genetic evidence has shown that these specific chromosomal structures restrict the genomic range of enhancer-promoter communication, as well as fine-tune the three-dimensional interactions between regulatory sequences.

However, the mechanistic details of how physical interactions within chromosomes translate into transcriptional outputs are totally unknown. In our lab, we explore the biophysical mechanisms that link chromosome conformation and long-range transcriptional regulation in mouse embryonic stem cells (ESC) and differentiated derivatives, using molecular biology, genetic engineering, single-cell experiments and physical modelling .

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Luca Giorgetti

This is a list of selected publications from this group. For a full list of publications, please visit our Publications page and search by group name.


Zuin J, Roth G, Zhan Y, Cramard J, Redolfi J, Piskadlo E, Mach P, Kryzhanovska M, Tihanyi G, Kohler H, Eder M, Leemans C, van Steensel B, Meister P, Smallwood S, Giorgetti L (2022) Nonlinear control of transcription through enhancer-promoter interactions

Nature 604, 571-577

Mach P, Kos PI, Zhan Y, Cramard J, Gaudin S, Tünnermann J, Marchi E, Eglinger J, Zuin J, Kryzhanovska M, Smallwood S, Gelman L, Roth G, Nora EP, Tiana G, Giorgetti L (2022) Cohesin and CTCF control the dynamics of chromosome folding

Nat Genet. 2022 Dec;54(12):1907-1918

Zenk F, Zhan Y, Kos P, Löser E, Atinbayeva N, Schächtle M, Tiana G, Giorgetti L, Iovino N (2021) HP1 drives de novo 3D genome reorganization in early Drosophila embryos.

Nature. 2021 Apr 14

McCord RP, Kaplan N, Giorgetti L. (2020) Chromosome Conformation Capture and Beyond: Toward an Integrative View of Chromosome Structure and Function

Molecular Cell 77, 688-708

Redolfi J*, Zhan Y*, Valdes-Quezada C*, Kryzhanovska M, Guerreiro I, Iesmantavicius V, Pollex T, Grand RS, Mulugeta E, Kind J, Tiana G, Smallwood SA, de Laat W, Giorgetti L (2019) DamC reveals principles of chromatin folding in vivo without crosslinking and ligation

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology 26, 471-480 (2019)

Marti-Renom M, Almouzni G,Bickmore W, Bystricky K, Cavalli G, Fraser P, Gasser SM, Giorgetti L, Heard E, Nicodemi M, Nollmann M, Orozco M, Pombo A, Torres-Padilla ME (2018) Challenges and guidelines toward 4D nucleome data and model standards

Nature Genetics 50, 1352-1358

Tiana G, Giorgetti L (2018) Integrating experiment, theory and simulation to determine the structure and dynamics of mammalian chromosomes

Curr Opin Struct Biol.49:11-17

Zhan Y, Mariani L, Barozzi I, Schulz EG, Bluthgen N, Stadler M, Tiana G, Giorgetti L. (2017) Reciprocal insulation analysis of Hi-C data shows that TADs represent a functionally but not structurally privileged scale in the hierarchical folding of chromosomes

Genome Res. doi: 10.1101/gr.212803.116, [Epub ahead of print]

Giorgetti L, Heard E (2016) Closing the loop: 3C versus DNA FISH

Genome Biol, 17:215

Zhan Y, Giorgetti L, Tiana G (2016) Looping probability of random heteropolymers helps to understand the scaling properties of biopolymers

Phys Rev E 94:032402

Giorgetti L, Lajoie BR, Carter AC, Attia M, Zhan Y, Xu J, Chen CJ, Kaplan N, Chang HY, Heard E, Dekker J (2016) Structural organization of the inactive X chromosome in the mouse

Nature, 535:575-579

Tiana G, Amitai A, Pollex T, Piolot T, Holcman D, Heard E, Giorgetti L (2016) Structural fluctuations of the chromatin fiber within topologically associating domains

Biophys J. 110:1234-1245

Giorgetti L, Galupa R, Nora EP, Piolot T, Lam F, Dekker J, Tiana G, Heard E (2014) Predictive polymer modeling reveals coupled fluctuations in chromosome conformation and transcription

Cell 157:950-63

Nora EP, Lajoye B, Schulz E, Giorgetti L, Okamoto I, Servant N, Piolot T, van Berkum NL, Meisig J, Sedat J, Gribnau J, Barillot E, Blüthgen N, Dekker J, Heard E (2012) Spatial partitioning of the regulatory landscape of the X-inactivation centre

Nature 485:381-5

Giorgetti L, Siggers T, Tiana G, Caprara G, Notarbartolo S, Corona T, Pasparakis M, Milani P, Bulyk ML, Natoli G (2010) Noncooperative interactions between transcription factors and clustered DNA binding sites enable graded transcriptional responses to environmental inputs.

Mol Cell 37:418-28
Comment in Nat Rev Genetics 11:240

Giorgetti L, Viverit L, Gori G, Barranco F, Vigezzi E, Broglia RA (2005) Quasi-particle properties of trapped Fermi gases

Journal of Physics B 38:949

Full list of publications
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Members

Group leader

In current position since 2015
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PhD students

In current position since 2022
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In current position since 2023
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In current position since 2023
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In current position since 2020
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Postdoctoral fellows

In current position since 2021
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In current position since 2023
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In current position since 2024
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In current position since 2023
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Technical/Research associates

In current position since 2017
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In current position since 2018
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Alumni

PhD students

Jana Tuennermann (2019-2024)
Pia Mach (2018-2023)
Josef Redolfi (2015-2020)
Yinxiu Zhan (2015-2020)

Postdoctoral fellows

Pavel Kos (2019-2024)
Jessica Zuin (2015-2022)
Ewa Piskadlo (2018-2022)
Yinxiu Zhan (2020-2022)
Josef Redolfi (2020-2021)
Marco Michalski (2018-2020)

Technical/Research associates

Mariya Kryzhanovska (2017-2021)
Peter David Cron (2015-2018)

Undergraduates

Yomna Gharib (2024)
Nessim Louafi (2023)
Elena Testoni (2022)
Alexis Cornec (2021)
Simon Gaudin (2021)
Tania Distler (2019)
Camilla Ugolini (2018)

Visiting scientists

Karolina Stepniak (2018-2019)

Education

2010
PhD, European Institute of Oncology (IEO), Milan, Italy
2003
MSc Physics, University of Milan, Italy

Positions held

2022-
Senior Group Leader; Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research
2015-2022
Junior Group Leader; Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research
2010-2014
Postdoctoral Fellow; Institut Curie, Paris, France
2004-2006
Research Associate; European Institute of Oncology (IEO), Milan, Italy

Honors

2023
SNSF Consolidator Grant
2023
EMBO member
2017
EMBO Young Investigator Award
2017
European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant
2011-2013
EMBO Long-Term Fellowship
2006-2011
Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) PhD fellowship