Steve Henikoff studies chromosomes, chromatin dynamics and epigenetics and develops genomics and computational tools to facilitate this research. He received a BS from the University of Chicago and a PhD from Harvard University and did post-doctoral work at the University of Washington. He has been a faculty member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center since 1981. He is also an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, an affiliate professor of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and co-Editor-in-Chief of the open access journal Epigenetics & Chromatin.

Genome-wide mapping of protein-DNA interaction dynamics

We recently introduced new tools for high-resolution genome-wide chromatin profiling and have applied them to study chromatin organization and dynamics in a variety of model systems, including yeast, flies and mammals. CUT&RUN uses antibody-tethered Micrococcal Nuclease for mapping transcription factors, histone modifications and chromatin proteins in situ, providing low-cost high-resolution genome-wide maps. CUT&Tag similarly tethers the Tn5 cut-and-paste transposase that we have applied to low cell numbers and single cells with high efficiency and low backgrounds. We use these methods to address questions in chromatin biology including: How do transcription factors find their binding sites in DNA packaged into nucleosomes? How are nucleosomes depleted from gene regulatory regions? What is the relationship between nucleosome deposition pathways and chromatin deregulation in disease? Our findings illustrate ways in which chromatin dynamics can play a central role in regulating gene expression and silencing.