Professor
Director, Genomic Analysis Laboratory
Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator
Salk International Council Chair in Genetics
Joseph Ecker is a first-generation college graduate from a Pennsylvania coal mining family. He’s also a professor in the Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory and director of the Genomic Analysis Laboratory at Salk. His pioneering work in sequencing the epigenome has made him a leader in both neuroscience and plant biology.
LA JOLLA–Under a microscope, it can be hard to tell the difference between any two neurons, the brain cells that store and process information. So scientists have turned to molecular methods to try to identify groups of neurons with different functions.
Read more »
This new atlas of human organ epigenomes provides a starting place to understand the role of chemical markers in development, health and disease.
For more than a decade, scientists have had a working map of the human genome, a complete picture of the DNA sequence that encodes human life. But new pages are still being added to that atlas: maps of chemical markers called methyl groups that stud strands of DNA and influence which genes are repressed and when. Read more »
Reprogramming adult cells to recapture their youthful “can-do-it-all” attitude appears to leave an indelible mark, found researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. When the team, led by Joseph Ecker, PhD., a professor in the Genomic Analysis Laboratory, scoured the epigenomes of so-called induced pluripotent stem cells base by base, they found a consistent pattern of reprogramming errors. Read more »
Although the human genome sequence faithfully lists (almost) every single DNA base of the roughly 3 billion bases that make up a human genome, it doesn’t tell biologists much about how its function is regulated. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute provide the first detailed map of the human epigenome, the layer of genetic control beyond the regulation inherent in the sequence of the genes themselves. Read more »
BA, Biology/Chemistry, The College of New Jersey, Ewing, N.J.
PhD, Microbiology, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine
Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University School of Medicine
