Rebecca Burgess, PhD

The Burgess laboratory uses mouse genetics, flow cytometry, cell culture and molecular biology techniques to study mechanisms regulating stem cell function. Stem cells depend on epigenetic mechanisms for their maintenance, self-renewal and differentiation. Stem cells in multiple tissues, including those in the blood, have highly regulated, low rates of protein synthesis and are sensitive to alterations in proteome quality. The long-term research goal of our laboratory is to identify and characterize the mechanisms by which chromatin and stem cell self-renewal factors regulate blood stem cell protein homeostasis under normal, stress and disease conditions.