Biography:

Dr Francois Robert obtained his PhD from Universite de Sherbrooke for his work on the structure of pre-initiation complexes under the supervision of Dr Benoit Coulombe. He then moved to the Boston area for a four year postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Richard Young at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, MA. During his post-doc, he development, with two of his colleagues, a new genomics tool often referred to as the ChIP-chip technology. After this success, he teamed up with two other colleagues and used ChIP-chip to profile more than 100 transcription factors in yeast (this represents about half the total number of transcription factors in this organism). This allowed the production of the most comprehensive gene regulatory network for a eukaryotic organism. After this momentary incursion in the gene network field, Dr Robert came back to his primary interest and used ChIP-chip to study chromatin. He therefore spent some time characterizing how chromatin modifying complexes are recruited to their target genes.

Dr Robert joined the IRCM in July 2003 as the Director of the Laboratory of Chromatin and Genomic Expression. As a Principal Investigator, Dr Robert continues to used ChIP-chip and other functional genomic approaches to study chromatin structure and function. Among other things, Dr Robert is very active in the study of H2A.Z, a variant of histone H2A. Dr Robert and his collaborators showed that this variant histone occupies most regulatory elements in the genome, where it regulated transcription by a mechanism that is still under intensive research. In addition, the Robert laboratory is very active in the development of new technologies aiming at better understanding the regulation of nuclear processes. In 2008 he was the recipient of the Maud Menten New Principal Investigator Prize in Biomedical Research from the Institute of Genetics.

Short summary of research interests:

The Robert laboratory focuses on chromatin and its role in nuclear processes such gene expression regulation and DNA replication. We use functional genomic approaches to study chromatin components at the genomic level. Chromatin plasticity is well recognized as being part of the regulation of DNA-associated cellular processes. It is also now considered as an important player in normal development and in cancer. It is therefore critical to better understand how chromatin plasticity is regulated and the consequences of its misregulation, both at the molecular and genomic levels.

Homepage: Robert Home Page
Email: francois.robert@ircm.qc.ca