The Barisic lab studies how chromatin remodelers control access to the genome, from the positioning of single nucleosomes to the 3D folding of interphase domains and the organization of mitotic chromosomes. We combine CRISPR and degron-based perturbation, mouse models of germinal center biology and lymphoma, single-cell and 3D genomics, and machine learning models that predict which perturbations are worth investigating, to establish causal rather than correlative rules of genome regulation. Our mission is to understand what remodelers actually decide, and to use that understanding to find vulnerabilities in the cancers caused when they are lost. The lab is based in the Belfer Research Building in New York City, and is affiliated with the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology in the Department of Medicine, the Department of Pharmacology and the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine.
"Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house."
- Henri Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis, 1905
The Lab Team
The Barisic lab brings together molecular biologists, computational scientists and clinicians who share a conviction that mechanism, not description, is what makes chromatin biology useful to patients.
Our Research
The Barisic Lab studies how chromatin remodelers control access to the genome, from single nucleosomes to whole chromosomes, and what breaks in cell fate and cancer when that control fails.