Contributors

Meet some of the people featured in the September 2017 issue of The Scientist.

| 4 min read

Register for free to listen to this article
Listen with Speechify
0:00
4:00
Share

MONTY RAKUSENSkirmantas Kriaucionis had been playing around with microscopes since his school days. But it was during a project with DNA methylation researcher Saulius Klimasauskas at Vilnius University in his native Lithuania that Kriaucionis got a real chance to dive into biological research. “The work was really exciting,” he says. “My interest in it has continued throughout my life.”

After relocating to the University of Edinburgh in 2000, Kriaucionis began a PhD with geneticist Adrian Bird on MeCP2, a protein that binds to methylated DNA. “It was a very exciting period to work on MeCP2,” Kriaucionis recalls—Bird’s lab had just developed a knockout mouse model, and mutations in the MECP2 gene had recently been linked to Rett syndrome in humans. With Bird, Kriaucionis identified a previously overlooked isoform of the protein that accounted for more than 90 percent of MeCP2 in mouse brains.

Kriaucionis earned his PhD in 2004, and, after a one-year postdoc at Edinburgh, moved to neuroscientist Nathaniel Heintz’s lab at Rockefeller University in 2006. There, he identified a new type of DNA methylation, 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), occurring at high levels in neurons ...

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of

The Scientist Logo
Receive full access to digital editions of The Scientist, as well as TS Digest, feature stories, more than 35 years of archives, and much more!
Already a member? Login Here

Keywords

Meet the Author

  • Catherine Offord

    Catherine is a science journalist based in Barcelona.
  • Jef Akst

    Jef Akst was managing editor of The Scientist, where she started as an intern in 2009 after receiving a master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses.

Published In

September 2017

Healing with Hallucinogens

The therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs

Share
3D illustration of a gold lipid nanoparticle with pink nucleic acid inside of it. Purple and teal spikes stick out from the lipid bilayer representing polyethylene glycol.
February 2025, Issue 1

A Nanoparticle Delivery System for Gene Therapy

A reimagined lipid vehicle for nucleic acids could overcome the limitations of current vectors.

View this Issue
Enhancing Therapeutic Antibody Discovery with Cross-Platform Workflows

Enhancing Therapeutic Antibody Discovery with Cross-Platform Workflows

sartorius logo
Considerations for Cell-Based Assays in Immuno-Oncology Research

Considerations for Cell-Based Assays in Immuno-Oncology Research

Lonza
An illustration of animal and tree silhouettes.

From Water Bears to Grizzly Bears: Unusual Animal Models

Taconic Biosciences
Sex Differences in Neurological Research

Sex Differences in Neurological Research

bit.bio logo

Products

Photo of a researcher overseeing large scale production processes in a laboratory.

Scaling Lentiviral Vector Manufacturing for Optimal Productivity

Thermo Fisher Logo
Collage-style urban graphic of wastewater surveillance and treatment

Putting Pathogens to the Test with Wastewater Surveillance

An illustration of an mRNA molecule in front of a multicolored background.

Generating High-Quality mRNA for In Vivo Delivery with lipid nanoparticles

Thermo Fisher Logo
Tecan Logo

Tecan introduces Veya: bringing digital, scalable automation to labs worldwide