Brian D. Strahl In 2001, Brian Strahl initiated his laboratory at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he has now been promoted to the rank of Full Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Brian Strahl is also the Director of Graduate Studies in his home department, and is the Faculty Director of the UNC High-Throughput Peptide Synthesis and Arraying Core Faculty.    With his colleagues, his group has been at the forefront of determining how histone PTMs such as acetylation, methylation and ubiquitylation regulate the accessibility of DNA and the genetic information it contains. Histones are central to the organization of our DNA in cells. These proteins come in a variety of types– defined as histone H3, H4, H2A and H2B, and they associate with themselves as a means to package our DNA within the nuclei of cells. Two copies each of each histone type come together to form what is called an octamer, which wraps approximately 147 base pairs of DNA around it. This structure (histones + DNA) makes up the fundamental building block of chromatin – the nucleosome. Strings of nucleosomes make up the chromatin fiber, and they organize into higher-order structures that are poorly defined but allow large genomes (e.g., ~3 billion base pairs making up the human genome) to fit in the confines of a 2-10 micron nucleus. With all this compaction, a fundamental question Brian Strahl’s group has been addressing is how our genome is made accessible at the right place and time for the distinct processes that occurs withinchromatin (e.g., gene expression, DNA repair and replicating the genome).    Dr. Strahl’slab has made a number of key contributions into the role of histone methylation and ubiquitylation in gene transcription, and more recently, in DNA repair. Using budding yeast as a model organism, his lab has helped to show how histone-modifying enzymes “hitch a ride” with RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) during gene transcription, and how the modifications they put on histones contributes to the transcription process and chromatin integrity.

Chromatin and Transcription; Histone Modifications; Epigenetics; UNC-Chapel Hill