Wendy Bickmore

Wendy Bickmore has made pioneering contributions to understanding how the spatial organization of chromosomes within the nucleus regulates gene expression and how disruption of this organization contributes to cancer. Her laboratory demonstrated that genes relocate within the nucleus upon activation and that chromosome territory positioning influences gene expression patterns in normal and malignant cells. She has shown how TAD boundary disruptions by structural variants in cancer allow inappropriate enhancer-promoter contacts that activate oncogenes. Her combination of microscopy-based chromatin visualization with genomics approaches has provided critical validation of Hi-C-derived models of 3D genome organization.