Guy Nir, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. He received his Ph.D. from the Bar-Ilan University (Ramat-Gan, Israel) in 2015. He completed his postdoctoral training in the Department of Genetics at the Harvard Medical School from 2015-2020. In January 2021, Dr. Nir joined the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the UT Medical with the support of a CPRIT Recruitment of First-Time, Tenure-Track Faculty Members award.
Dr. Nir’s research focuses on investigating how genome organization regulates cell fate decisions. As a graduate student in Dr. Yuval Garini's lab at Bar-Ilan University, Dr. Nir developed a strong interest in protein-DNA interactions by studying how the nucleoid-associated protein, HU, packages single DNA molecules.
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Guy Nir, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. He received his Ph.D. from the Bar-Ilan University (Ramat-Gan, Israel) in 2015. He completed his postdoctoral training in the Department of Genetics at the Harvard Medical School from 2015-2020. In January 2021, Dr. Nir joined the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the UT Medical with the support of a CPRIT Recruitment of First-Time, Tenure-Track Faculty Members award.
Dr. Nir’s research focuses on investigating how genome organization regulates cell fate decisions. As a graduate student in Dr. Yuval Garini's lab at Bar-Ilan University, Dr. Nir developed a strong interest in protein-DNA interactions by studying how the nucleoid-associated protein, HU, packages single DNA molecules. As a graduate student, Dr. Nir utilized a force-free technique to reveal that at low HU concentrations, DNA is compacted (as expected). However, at high protein concentrations, single DNA molecules get rigidified but not beyond the intrinsic DNA persistence length. By complementing his work with atomic force microscopy, Dr. Nir discovered that HU locally alters the DNA persistence length, thus, induces incoherent persistence length along single DNA molecules in vitro. Dr. Nir joined the lab of Dr. C.-ting Wu in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School as a postdoctoral fellow. Intrigued with how chromosomes are folded within single cells, Dr. Nir spearheaded the development of a novel technology to trace the folding of chromosomes in situ at the nanoscale. With Dr. Ting Wu as his mentor and together with the labs of Dr. Marc A. Marti-Renom (CRG, Span), Dr. Erez Lieberman-Aiden (Baylor), Dr. Peng Yin (Harvard), and Bruker, Inc., they visualized the folding of an 8.16 Mb segment of chromosome 19. Dr. Nir designed a library of Oligopaint Fluorescence in situ Hybridization (FISH) probes targeting 21 genomic loci and utilized a fluidics-based sequential imaging approach to visualize all of these targets in the same cells.
At UTMB, Dr. Nir focuses on the central mechanisms that regulate the folding of chromosomes and the implications of misfolding on cell identity and disease. Certain cancer types are characterized by translocations. Often, translocations studies focus on the breakage point. However, chromosomes fold in a manner that can reside loci several megabase pairs away in proximity. This CPRIT grant supports Dr. Nir in determining the structural and functional implications of translocations to entire chromosomes at the single-cell level. With this strategy, Dr. Nir is anticipating learning the significance of chromosome folding in forming translocations and the functional consequences on the translocated chromosomes.
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