Through my graduate career, I have focused on understanding the archaeal cell biology, especially of extremophilic microorganisms belonging to the Sulfolobus genus.
My research projects have been centered on the double helix by studying mechanisms which modify the DNA topology and might be involved in the regulation of the cell cycle, with an emphasize on the role of the DNA methylations. I have identified for the first time the presence of orphans DNA methylations in Sulfolobus spp., which suggests the presence of epigenetics in Archaea. I am currently leading a pluridisciplinary study to demonstrate the impact of these epigenetic marks by investigating the research hypothesis that methylation patterns are filling the gap between higher-order chromosome architecture and transcriptional activity, which in turn is linked to the physiological state of the cell.
A range of molecular biology and cytological techniques, as well as single-molecule genome resequencing methods, are used to study the dynamic regulatory network controlling changes of the double helix in Archaea.