Danny Reinberg

Danny Reinberg has made foundational contributions to understanding Polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) and its catalytic subunit EZH2 as a histone H3K27 methyltransferase that establishes and maintains gene silencing in development and cancer. His biochemical reconstitution of PRC2 activity and structural studies have revealed how the complex reads existing H3K27me3 marks to propagate epigenetic memory during cell division. He demonstrated how EZH2 gain-of-function mutations in lymphoma alter substrate specificity to drive aberrant H3K27 trimethylation. His work on Polycomb domain formation has illuminated how chromatin architecture and histone modifications cooperate to establish stable gene silencing programs in cancer.