PEBC Report - Programa de Epigenética y Biología del Cáncer

Dr Alejandro Vaquero
Chromatin Biology Group
Alejandro Vaquero (Barcelona, Spain, 1971) is senior group
leader of the Chromatin Biology Laboratory at PEBC-IDI-
BELL and ICREA researcher. He graduated in Biochemistry
in 1994 from the University of Barcelona (UB), and received
his PhD “Cum Laude” from the same University in 2000.
From 2000 to 2005 he performed his postdoctoral studies
in the laboratory of Dr Danny Reinberg (HHMI, Piscataway,
NJ, USA), where he studied the role of Sirtuins, a group of
NAD + -dependent deacetylases homologues of the yeast
silencing factor Sir2, on chromatin function. In 2001, he
became Howard Hughes Research associate, position he
held until the end of 2005, when he returned to Spain as an
I3P Researcher (CSIC) in the Institut de Biologia Molecular
de Barcelona (IBMB-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain) where he was
appointed Icrea Researcher in Dec 2006. In January 2008,
he joined the Cancer Epigenetics and Biology Program
(Barcelona, Spain).
Research Interests
The main goal of our laboratory is to understand the mechanisms
that rule Chromatin dynamics and in particular how
these post-translational modifications interplay with the rest
of chromatin machinery to keep a healthy and efficient
Chromatin organization. As a consequence of that, we are
also interested in the functional implications of these mechanisms
in cancer and aging. For that purpose, our lab uses
a combination of Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology
approaches to gain insight into Chromatin Biology. In particular,
our studies focus in a group of proteins, the Sir2 family
or Sirtuins, that are homologues of the yeast silencing factor
Sir2, a NAD + -dependent deacetylase involved in many
aspects of chromatin regulation such as epigenetic silencing,
DNA repair and replication, DNA recombination, etc...
Two features make particularly interesting the Sir2 family:
First, the requirement of the metabolic redox cofactor NAD+
for the enzymatic activity of the family, allows their members
to act as sensors of cell metabolism. Second, members of
this family show a close link with the regulation of a specific
modification, acetylation of lysine 16 in histone H4
(H4K16Ac), involved in many functions from Chromatin
structure, gene expression and cancer to many epigenetic
processes through evolution.
Postdoctoral researchers: Laia Bosch
PhD Students: Helena Raurell, Paloma Martinez,
Irene Santos, Max Becker
Technician: Anna Marazuela
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