Welcome to the Boone lab!

Chromatin describes the chaotic and complex interactions of proteins, RNA, and DNA to regulate gene expression, store or compartmentalize DNA, and bridge environmental signals to cellular responses through epigenetic modifications to chromatin itself.

Protein dynamics and concentration are critical to many chromatin and epigenetic mechanisms to regulate gene expression. Accumulation of epigenetic enzymes, readers/writer complexes, and transcriptional machinery occurs to silence or activate genes. However, many questions remain. How are these processes specific and dynamic, while in the heavily cramped nuclear space? How do these mechanisms maintain proteostasis while efficiently and specifically localizing large amounts of proteins to regulate gene expression? Can these epigenetic mechanisms be co-opted for synthetic biology purposes and applications?

Our lab is focused on answering these questions by understanding how plants use protein accumulation and regulation to control gene expression. Our long-term goal is to create plant-specific protein tools to form protein-specific gene regulatory compartments using plant-specific processes.

Please reach out to us with any questions,  collaborations, or interest in joining the lab.