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Dafne Campigli Di Giammartino

Principal Investigator- tenure track
Researcher Tenure Track - Principal Investigator
3D Chromatin Conformation and RNA Genomics
Address
Research center
About

Throughout my career I focused on understanding the cellular mechanisms underlying principles of gene expression and cell identity, aiming to shed light on the basic principles that govern these processes, both in physiological and pathological conditions.

During my PhD I worked in an RNA laboratory at Columbia University in New York where I was involved in the proteomic purification of the pre-mRNA 3’-end processing complex that led to the discovery of several novel proteins that connect mRNA processing with various nuclear pathways. I then characterized in depth the functions of PARP1 and RBBP6 (implicated in DNA damage repair and cancer) unraveling their molecular mechanism of action within the context of pre-mRNA modification (specifically 3’-end cleavage and polyadenylation).

During my postdoc at Weill Cornell Medicine, I explored the fields of epigenetics and chromatin conformation. Using advanced NGS techniques (such as Hi-C, HiChIP, RNA-seq, ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq etc) and a variety of CRISPR-based technologies I dissected the interplay between transcription factors, histone modifications and chromatin conformation changes during somatic cell reprogramming from mouse embryonic fibroblasts to induced pluripotent cells, and integrated this data with transcriptional changes at different stages of reprogramming. More recently, as a research associate at Cornell I expanded this line of research to patient-derived glioma stem cells (GSC) building the first atlas of 3D promoter-enhancer (prom-enh) contacts in order to identify and target tumor-specific 3D enhancer hubs (manuscript in preparation).

As a researcher in IIT I will develop original technologies and apply existing cutting edge genomics, proteomics, epigenetic engineering tools as well as advanced chromatin topology assays in cancer stem cells, in order to determine the role of ncRNAs and their epitranscriptional modifications in the organization of the 3D genome, with a specific focus on prom-enh loops.


Education

Title: Postdoc
Institute: Well Cornell Medicine
Location: New York
Country: United States
From: 2014 To: 2019

Title: PhD
Institute: Columbia University
Location: New York
Country: United States
From: 2007 To: 2014

Title: B.Sc and M.Sc
Institute: Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Location: Jerusalem
Country: Israel
From: 1999 To: 2004

Experience External

Title: Research Associate
Institute: Weill Cornell Medicine
Location: New York
Country: United States
From: 2020 To: 2022

All Publications
2024
Murphy D., Salataj E., Di Giammartino D.C., Rodriguez-Hernaez J., Kloetgen A., Garg V., Char E., Uyehara C.M., Ee L.-S., Lee U.J., Stadtfeld M., Hadjantonakis A.-K., Tsirigos A., Polyzos A., Apostolou E.
3D Enhancer–promoter networks provide predictive features for gene expression and coregulation in early embryonic lineages
Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, vol. 31, (no. 1), pp. 125-140
Article Journal
2022
He Y., Kim I.-K., Bian J., Polyzos A., Di Giammartino D.C., Zhang Y.-W., Luo J., Hernandez M.O., Kedei N., Cam M., Borczuk A.C., Lee T., Han Y., Conner E.A., Wong M., Tillo D.C., Umemura S., Chen V., Ruan L., White J.B., Miranda I.C., Awasthi P.P., Altorki N.K., Divakar P., Elemento O., Apostolou E., Giaccone G.
A Knock-In Mouse Model of Thymoma With the GTF2I L424H Mutation
Journal of Thoracic Oncology, vol. 17, (no. 12), pp. 1375-1386
2022
Di Giammartino D.C., Polyzos A., Apostolou E.
Assessing Specific Networks of Chromatin Interactions with HiChIP
Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.), vol. 2532, pp. 113-141
Book Chapter Book Series
2021
Pelham-Webb B., Polyzos A., Wojenski L., Kloetgen A., Li J., Di Giammartino D.C., Sakellaropoulos T., Tsirigos A., Core L., Apostolou E.
H3K27ac bookmarking promotes rapid post-mitotic activation of the pluripotent stem cell program without impacting 3D chromatin reorganization
Molecular Cell, vol. 81, (no. 8), pp. 1732-1748.e8
2021
Doane A.S., Chu C.-S., Di Giammartino D.C., Rivas M.A., Hellmuth J.C., Jiang Y., Yusufova N., Alonso A., Roeder R.G., Apostolou E., Melnick A.M., Elemento O.
OCT2 pre-positioning facilitates cell fate transition and chromatin architecture changes in humoral immunity
Nature Immunology, vol. 22, (no. 10), pp. 1327-1340
Awards and Achievements
2022
Campigli Di Giammartino D.
Early Career Fellow (ECF)
2015
Campigli Di Giammartino D.
NYSCF Drunckenmiller fellowship