Research Interests

Steve Jacobsen studies DNA methylation and epigenetic gene regulation processes that play important roles in development, defense against transposons, and genome integrity. His laboratory uses genetics, genomics, and biochemistry in both the model plant Arabidopsis and the mouse. The work focuses on mechanisms by which DNA methylation, histone methylation, and noncoding RNAs converge in a number of overlapping and self-reinforcing pathways to promote stable and heritible gene silencing.

See lab web site for more details http://www.mcdb.ucla.edu/Research/Jacobsen/LabWebSite/P_Index.php

Selected Publications

Sisi Li, Linda Yen, William A. Pastor, Jonathan B. Johnston, Jiamu Du, Colin Shew, Wanlu Liu, Jamie Ho, Bryan Stender, Amander T. Clark, Alma L. Burlingame, Lucia Daxinger, Dinshaw J. Patel, and Steven E. Jacobsen, "Mouse MORC3 is a GHKL ATPase that localizes to H3K4me3 marked chromatin", Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. U. S. A 113E: 5108-5116 (2016).

Adam J. Bewick, Lexiang Ji, Chad E. Niederhuth, Eva-Maria Willing, Brigitte T. Hofmeister, Xiuling Shi, Li Wang, Zefu Lu, Nicholas A. Rohr, Benjamin Hartwig, Christiane Kiefer, Roger B. Deal, Jeremy Schmutz, Jane Grimwood, Hume Stroud, Steven E. Jacobsen, Korbinian Schneeberger, Xiaoyu Zhang, and Robert J. Schmitz, "On the origin and evolutionary consequences of gene body DNA methylation", Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. U. S. A 113: 9111-9116 (2016).

Martin Groth, Guillaume Moissiard, Markus Wirtz, Haifeng Wang, Carolina Garcia-Salinas, Perla A. Ramos-Parra, Sylvain Bischof, Suhua Feng, Shawn J. Cokus, Amala John, Danielle C. Smith, Jixian Zhai, Christopher J. Hale, Jeff A. Long, Ruediger Hell, Rocio I. Diaz de la Garza & Steven E. Jacobsen, "MTHFD1 controls DNA methylation in Arabidopsis", Nature Communications 7:11640 (13 pages): (2016).

Christopher J. Hale, Magdalena E. Potok, Jennifer Lopez, Truman Do, Ao Liu, Javier Gallego-Bartolome, Scott D. Michaels, Steven E. Jacobsen, "Identification of Multiple Proteins Coupling Transcriptional Gene Silencing to Genome Stability in Arabidopsis thaliana", PLOS Genetics DOI:10.1371 (pgen1006092 20 pages): (2016).

C. Jake Harris, Dylan Husmann, Wanlu Liu, Farid El Kasmi, Haifeng Wang, Ashot Papikian, William A. Pastor, Guillaume Moissiard, Ajay A. Vashisht, Jeffery L. Dang, James A. Wohlschlegel, Steven E. Jacobsen, "Arabidopsis AtMORC4 and AtMORC7 Form Nuclear Bodies and Repress a Large Number of Protein-Coding Genes", PLOS Genetics DOI:10.1371 (pgen1005998 22 pages): (2016).

William A. Pastor, Di Chen, Wanlu Liu, Rachel Kim, Anna Sahakyan, Anastasia Lukianchikov, Kathrin Plath, Steven E. Jacobsen, and Amander T. Clark, "Naive Human Pluripotent Cells Feature a Methylation Landscape Devoid of Blastocyst or Germline Memory", Cell Stem Cell 18: 323-329 (2016).

Sisi Li, Zhenlin Yang, Xuan Du, Rui Liu, Alex W. Wilkinson, Or Gozani, Steven E. Jacobsen, Dinshaw J. Patel, and Jiamu Du, "Structural Basis for the Unique Multivalent Readout of Unmodified H3 Tail by Arabidopsis ORC1b BAH-PHD Cassette", Structure 24: 486-494 (2016).

Haifeng Wang, Getu Beyene, Jixian Zhai, Suhua Feng, Noah Fahlgren, Nigel J. Taylor, Rebecca Bart, James C. Carrington, Steven E. Jacobsen, and Israel Ausin, "CG gene body DNA methylation changes and evolution of duplicated genes in cassava", Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. U. S. A 112: 13729-13734 (2015).

Jixian Zhai, Sylvain Bischof, Haifeng Wang, Suhua Feng, Tzuu-fen Lee, Chong Teng, Xinyuan Chen, Soo Young Park, Linshan Liu, Javier Gallego-Bartolome, Wanlu Liu, Ian R. Henderson, Blake C. Meyers, Israel Ausin, and Steven E. Jacobsen, "A One Precursor One siRNA Model for Pol IV-Dependent siRNA Biogenesis", Cell 163: 445-455 (2015).

Puya G. Yazdi, Brian A. Pedersen, Jared F. Taylor, Omar S. Khattab, Yu-Han Chen, Yumay Chen, Steven E. Jacobsen, Ping H. Wang, "Increasing Nucleosome Occupancy Is Correlated with an Increasing Mutation Rate so Long as DNA Repair Machinery Is Intact", PLOS ONE 10 (e0136574): 1-16 (2015).

Puya G. Yazdi, Brian A. Pedersen, Jared F. Taylor, Omar S. Khattab, Yu-Han Chen, Yumay Chen, Steven E. Jacobsen, Ping H. Wang, "Nucleosome Organization in Human Embryonic Stem Cells", PLOS ONE 10 (e0136314): 1-18 (2015).

Jiamu Du, Lianna M. Johnson, Steven E. Jacobsen and Dinshaw J. Patel, "DNA methylation pathways and their crosstalk with histone methylation", Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 16: 519-532 (2015).

Marco Morselli, William A Pastor, Barbara Montanini, Kevin Nee, Roberto Ferrari, Kai Fu, Giancarlo Bonora, Liudmilla Rubbi, Amander T Clark, Simone Ottonello, Steven E Jacobsen, and Matteo Pellegrini, "In vivo targeting of de novo DNA methylation by histone modifications in yeast and mouse", eLife 4 (e060205): 1-21 (2015).

Shuaibin Zhang, Bing Zhou, Yanyuan Kang, Xia Cui, Ao Liu, Angelique Deleris, Maxim VC Greenberg, Xiekui Cui, Qi Qiu, Falong Lu, James A Wohlschlegel, Steven E Jacobsen and Xiaofeng Cao, "C-terminal domains of histone demethylase JMJ14 interact with a pair of NAC transcription factors to mediate specific chromatin association", Cell Discovery 1 (15003): 1-13 (2015).

Xuehua Zhong, Christopher J. Hale, Minh Nguyen, Israel Ausin, Martin Groth, Jonathan Hetzel, Ajay A. Vashisht, Ian R. Henderson, James A. Wohlschlegel, and Steven E. Jacobsen, "DOMAINS REARRANGED METHYLTRANSFERASE3 controls DNA methylation and regulates RNA polymerase V transcript abundance in Arabidopsis", Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. U. S. A 112: 911-916 (2015).