The Denu lab is interested in understanding the mechanisms and biological functions of reversible protein modifications that modulate signal transduction and chromatin function.
Relevance to Human Disease
The research philosophy is based on the idea that in order to understand a dynamic biological process, we need to understand the mechanisms, the regulation and biological role of the enzymes that carryout these processes. The importance of these enzymes in the manifestation of disease is clearly revealed in the number of human diseases (e.g. cancer) caused by mutations that lead to inappropriate chromatin modification or misregulation of these signaling pathways.