The Janicki laboratory uses synthetic biology—artificial molecules or systems that mimic naturally occurring ones—to develop advanced technologies for the study of transcriptional and epigenetic regulatory mechanisms in living mammalian cells. She is interested in how epigenetic mechanisms, which regulate the heritable activation and silencing of genes, alter chromatin, the packaged form of DNA in the nucleus.

Dr. Janicki joined The Wistar Institute in 2005 after finishing her postdoctoral fellowship at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. She received her bachelor’s degree in biology and English from Tufts University in Massachusetts in 1993, and her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in Baltimore in 1999. In 2005, Janicki received the prestigious Beckman Young Investigator Award and in 2007 the Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar Research Award from the March of Dimes Foundation.

In synthetic biology, systems that do not exist in the natural world are engineered for the purpose of simplification or to design new functions. The Janicki laboratory uses this relatively new science to investigate mechanisms of transcriptional activation and gene silencing, and is currently developing new systems to study disease-causing mutations, and various forms of RNA.

The laboratory’s long-term goal is to develop technologies that will merge molecular biology with high-resolution cellular imaging in order to investigate how gene expression mechanisms are coordinated and regulated directly at chromatin, and to uncover new mechanisms. Janicki hopes to expand on these discoveries to gain insight into how the misregulation of epigenetic and transcriptional mechanisms can cause disease, and to identify and validate disease prevention and treatment therapies.

1 - Lan L, Ui A, Nakajima S, Hatakeyama K, Hoshi M, Watanabe R, Janicki, SM, Ogiwara H, Kohno T, Kanno S, Yasul A., The ACF1 Complex is required for DNA double-strand break repair in human cells., Molecular Cell. 2010 Dec 22;40(6):976-87., 21172662

2 - Shanbhag NM, Rafalska-Metcalf IU, Balane-Bolivar C, Janicki, SM, Greenberg RA., ATM-dependent chromatin changes silence transcription in cis to DNA double-strand breaks., Cell. 2010 Jun 11;141(6):970-81. Comment in: Cell. 2010 Jun 11;141(6):924-6. , 20550933

3 - Rafalska-Metcalf IU, Powers SL, Joo LM, LeRoy G, Janicki, SM., Single cell analysis of transcriptional activation dynamics., PLoS One. 2010 Apr 21;5(4):e10272., 20422051

4 - Rafalska-Metcalf IU. Janicki, SM., Show and tell: visualizing gene expression in living cells., Journal of Cell Science. 120(Pt 14):2301-7, 2007 Jul 15., 17606985

5 - Shav-Tal Y. Darzacq X. Shenoy SM. Fusco D. Janicki, SM. Spector DL. Singer RH., Dynamics of single mRNPs in nuclei of living cells., Science. 304(5678):1797-800, 2004 Jun 18. , 15205532

6 - Janicki, SM. Tsukamoto T. Salghetti SE. Tansey WP. Sachidanandam R. Prasanth KV. Ried T. Shav-Tal Y. Bertrand E. et al. , From silencing to gene expression: real-time analysis in single cells., Cell. 116(5):683-98, 2004 Mar 5., 15006351

7 - Janicki, SM. Spector DL., Nuclear choreography: interpretations from living cells., Current Opinion in Cell Biology. 15(2):149-57, 2003 Apr. Review. , 12648670

8 - Muratani M. Gerlich D. Janicki, SM. Gebhard M. Eils R. Spector DL., Metabolic-energy-dependent movement of PML bodies within the mammalian cell nucleus., Nature Cell Biology. 4(2):106-10, 2002 Feb. , 11753375

9 - Tsukamoto T. Hashiguchi N. Janicki, SM. Tumbar T. Belmont AS. Spector DL., Visualization of gene activity in living cells., Nature Cell Biology. 2(12):871-8, 2000 Dec. , 11146650

10 - Janicki, SM. Stabler SM. Monteiro MJ., Familial Alzheimer's disease presenilin-1 mutants potentiate cell cycle arrest., Neurobiology of Aging. 21(6):829-36, 2000 Nov-Dec. , 11124426