Roan van Scheppingen

Already during my bachelor internship, where I studied Wnt enhancer-promoter contacts using 4C, I grew increasingly interested in the mechanisms underlying dynamic processes of genome organization. As part of my master’s program Cancer, Stem Cells and Developmental Biology at Utrecht University, I had the opportunity to do two internships, at the van Rheenen lab and the Torres-Padilla lab. Here I focused on the dynamic processes giving rise to complex phenotypes like the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and the switch from totipotency to pluripotency, respectively.

Especially fascinated by the direct molecular mechanism that underpin genome organization, I decided to join the lab of Benjamin Rowland as PhD student in January 2021. Here I study the mechanical stress on DNA associated with Cohesin’s dynamic loop extrusion process.