Jesse Dixon

Jesse Dixon produced the first high-resolution maps of topologically associating domains in mammalian cells and demonstrated that TAD boundaries are highly conserved regulatory structures whose disruption by structural variants can cause enhancer hijacking and oncogene activation. His work showed that inversions, deletions, and translocations that cross TAD boundaries in cancer create neo-TADs with novel enhancer-gene contacts, providing a mechanistic explanation for oncogene activation by non-coding structural variants. He has characterized how IDH1 mutations in glioma cause CTCF binding site hypermethylation, disrupting TAD boundaries and enabling PDGFRA enhancer hijacking. His research connects structural genomics to cancer gene regulation.