Dr. Sara Sdelci
Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Barcelona
“Chromatin Beyond Epigenetics: A Metabolic Sponge at the Heart of the Cell”
Host: Juliane Winkler
Programm
In her seminar, Dr. Sdelci will trace this evolution: from metabolic enzymes acting on chromatin to chromatin itself as a dynamic metabolic reservoir.
About the speaker
Dr. Sara Sdelci is an internationally recognized researcher working at the interface of chromatin biology, genome regulation, epigenetics and cellular metabolism. Over the past seven years, she has pioneered the field of nuclear metabolism, showing that metabolic enzymes are active, regulated components of chromatin biology that directly shape transcription, genome stability, DNA repair, cell identity and therapeutic response in cancer.
Her scientific path spans cell-cycle biology (PhD, IRB Barcelona), chromatin-targeted perturbation and chemical biology (postdoc, CeMM Vienna), and nuclear metabolism in cancer, the focus of her independent lab at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) since 2019. Her group has built an integrative framework — combining chromatin proteomics, metabolomics, quantitative imaging, CRISPR screening and computational biology — to systematically map nuclear metabolic functions. Dr. Sdelci’s lab lab produced the first chromatome-scale analyses across human tissues and cancer models, identifying ~250 chromatin-associated metabolic enzymes with highly dynamic, context-dependent chromatin association, and uncovering roles in transcription, chromosome segregation, nuclear energy homeostasis, DNA repair and cancer vulnerability.
More recently, her lab has asked whether chromatin itself can act as a metabolic entity — capturing, storing and releasing metabolites in response to DNA damage or nutrient starvation, and thereby shaping the nucleus's biochemical environment. Dr. Sdelci’s work has been recognized through many awards including an ERC Starting Grant and member of the EMBO Young Investigator Programme.