Karen L. Reddy, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry | Johns Hopkins Medicine

The focus of the research in the Reddy lab is to begin to understand how the nuclear periphery and other subcompartments contribute to general nuclear architecture and to specific gene regulation. Understanding the cell biology of genomes and how nuclear architecture controls gene expression is necessary to truly understand biological processes such as development and disease.

Although sequencing of the genome and comparative genome analysis have yielded insights into the regulation and dis-regulation of genetic information, these efforts shed little light into how genomes actually work in vivo. The impact of architectural and cellular organization of genomes on gene activity is a next step to unlocking genetic and epigenetic mechanisms in development and disease. Specifically, they are trying to understand how genes are regulated at the nuclear periphery, decipher how genes are localized (or “addressed”) to specific nuclear compartments and, finally, determine how these processes are utilized in development and corrupted in disease.