Institute at Brown for Environment and Society

Currently, I am working to understand the chemistry that helps govern the process of epigenetic regulation (e.g. how your body changes it's genetic code in response to environmental factors). Specifically, my current project seeks to understand cytosine methylation - a specific type of DNA "damage" that is associated with turning genes 'on' and 'off'. Our methods of investigation allow us to gather data on the molecular scale about the exact atoms, isotopes, and chemical functional groups that are involved with each biological/environmental process. In the future, I would like to look at other, exogenous causes of DNA damage and how our body's enzymatic machinery handles different "damage scenarios".