The main interest of the research carried on in the lab revolves around deciphering the logic governing transcription regulation during vertebrate development. The general strategy employed consists of tightly combining computational methodologies and experimental validations in the model fish, Oryzias latipes (medaka).
The Medaka fish is an ideal system to study regulation of transcription in vertebrate. Its genome has been fully sequenced and the species lies in an ideal evolutionary distance from other sequenced fishes for the analysis of non-coding elements. Number of genetic tools have been developed in medaka including a powerful enhancer assays that we developed and use in the lab.