It’s official! We are now the EMBL Epigenetics & Neurobiology Unit. Why the name change? Since our founding in 1998, we have been the Mouse Biology Unit – a name that was strongly influenced by the vision of the former Director of our Italian host institute, Glauco Tocchini-Valentini. Via the establishment of EMBL in Italy, he wished to bring advanced molecular genetic research centered around mouse models of human disease to the country. This formula worked well for our start up phase and enabled us to recruit and host a large number of outstanding young group leaders – all of whom have moved on to successful tenured positions in academia following the completion of their EMBL training.
But after almost twenty years we decided that the time has come to focus our research on two topics that have been particularly strong at the Unit. In keeping with the EMBL tradition of interdisciplinary research, we’ve decided to bring together epigeneticists and neurobiologists under a single roof. Put together outstanding biologists, physicists, and biochemists interested in gene regulation, nuclear architecture, transcriptional mechanisms of tissue development & plasticity, and neural circuits, physiology, and behavior and see what happens.
Check out the labs of our new group leaders: Hiroki Asari, Jamie Hackett, and Matthieu Boulard.
