I obtained my Bachelor and Master degree in Bioinformatics at Huazhong Agricultural University in China. During my master graduate, I participated several projects about 3D genome and regulatory element. And I completed my graduate thesis about enhancer identification and method comparison in Arabidopsis. Previous research experience aroused my interest strongly in enhancer. A browsing experience on Twitter made me find that ENHPATHY project is exactly what I want. It’s very cool and interesting to be able to link basic biological research like regulatory element with human diseases. Specifically, I will focus on dissecting Epromoters’ function and molecular mechanisms in stress and inflammatory conditions. I’m also interested in integrating multi-omics data by computational methods to explore the relationship between enhancer and diseases. I’m looking forward to cooperating with other ENHPATHY researchers to promote enhancer and diseases study together.
Beyond scientific research, I also like reading, traveling, watching NBA and Esports games in my free time.
Dissection of coordinated stress responses by novel promoter elements with enhancer activity (WP1)
We recently demonstrated that a subset of gene promoters, termed Epromoters, works “also” as bona fide enhancers and regulate distal gene expression. Subsequently, we found that Epromoters play a key role in the coordination of rapid gene induction in the stress response, in particular during inflammation. The ESR will study the functional role of Epromoters in different stress and inflammatory conditions, determine their impact in genome topology, and establish in vivo models to assess Epromoter variation in inflammatory diseases. This systematic approach will unravel the basic molecular mechanisms of this novel type of regulatory elements and shed the basis of their potential involvement in diseases.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 860002. The information contained in this website reflects only the authors’ view. REA and EC are not responsible for any use that may be made of this information.
Veronica Erconi (ESR6) 
Salvatore Spicuglia (Supervisor)