To achieve our ambitious goals, we developed a highly interdisciplinary research and training network, which exploited the integrated analysis of several state-of-the-art technologies from genomics, imaging, cell biology, bioinformatics, modelling, and design.
In brief, the network has contributed to important technical developments (Hauth, et al. 2022, JoVE) and advancements in the understanding of chromatin structure and dynamics (Zuin, Roth, Zhan, Redolfi, Piskaldo, Mach et al. 2022, Nature; Mach, et al. 2022, Nat Gen; Sankar, Mohammad, Kumar-Sundaramurthy, et al. 2022, Nat Gen), and epigenetic mechanisms of leukemia (Mas, Santoro, Blanco, Gamarra-Figueroa, et al. 2022, Genes Dev) and at least 7 more publications are envisioned to contribute to the field.
The acquired knowledge will contribute to identifying novel targets that can be exploited for both the diagnosis and treatment of human pathologies, thus having a significant impact on the patients’ lives. Moreover, nowadays the study of chromatin architecture is restricted due to its technical complexity and high cost. Our network contributed to making this research more accessible by optimizing a Capture Hi-C protocol for high-resolution (Hauth, et al. 2022, JoVE).
Finally, the need of communicating the scientific results to the general public inspired us to develop a communication toolkit (Molins-Pitarch, 2021, Zenodo), which facilitates the process of sharing complex scientific concepts with society. This already had a very positive impact on the communication skills of all the researchers involved in the network, but also the different outreach activities and the Life’s Journey exhibition made it possible to communicate our work to more than 9 thousand people from a wide variety of audiences.