MATT KALINOWSKIResults from the Human Genome Project were coming in when Erica Larschan was in high school. Larschan’s father, aware of her interest in biology, took her to a lecture at Northeastern University by one of the leaders in the human genomics field. “I was really fascinated,” she says, and the experience encouraged her to pursue a career in biology.
While an undergraduate majoring in biochemistry at Wellesley College, in her hometown in Massachusetts, Larschan spent three summers doing research in a cancer biology lab at Harvard Medical School. At the time she heard another talk that would shape her career, this time by Harvard professor Fred Winston. In 1998, Larschan returned to Harvard as a graduate student in Winston’s lab.
METHODS: Larschan focused on a group of histone-modifying enzymes, called the SAGA complex, which functions in transcriptional activation in yeast. Using chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), Larschan showed that the SAGA complex provided the link between general transcription factors and gene-specific activators.1 “Our lab, alongside another lab, was the first to show that the SAGA complex—I think any complex—functioned as a coactivator” for transcription, says Winston.
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