Benjamin Manning Email and Phone Number

As a postdoctoral fellow in the Yusufzai lab at DFCI / Harvard Medical School, I am researching the contributions of epigenetics to development and cancer. Specifically, I am researching the mechanisms of action of numerous chromatin modifying enzymes, from ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling enzymes like CHD and SWI/SNF, to chromatin modifiers like PRC complexes. I have established a number of robust in vitro assays that quantify the effects of enzyme activity on chromatin substrates, both mono/di-nucleosomal and arrays. I am also working to define the subunit compositions, and roles, of these chromatin modifiers in various cell lines.

I look for new ways that cells use to regulate their genomes. During my graduate research in the Peterson lab, I've used a combination of biochemistry, yeast genetics, and next-generation sequencing approaches to discover how cells use ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling enzymes to access their heterochromatin.• Performed diverse protein purifications and standardizations, authored lab protocols for them• Identified, characterized, and engineered disrupting mutations, of binding interactions between a multisubunit chromatin remodeling complex and heterochromatin structural proteins• Optimized assays to first reconstruct heterochromatin in vitro from purified components, then to monitor eviction of heterochromatin proteins from chromatin• Found that separation‐of‐function mutant complex is specifically defective in heterochromatin eviction• Used genetics and NGS to identify roles for this eviction in DNA replication and epigenetic silencing• Productivity in multidisciplinary collaboration projects led to additional peer‐reviewed publications

In the lab of James Deshler Ph. D., I identified mRNAs with computationally predicted, evolutionarily conserved RNA localization motifs. I validated these motifs' localization functionality in the developmental context of an oocyte model system. I used fluorescence microscopy and tissue section hybridization to visualize localization.