H. Diego Folco

Biography

I have lived in four countries and worked in seven institutions. I started my scientific career at the National University of Cordoba, Argentina, where I pursued my doctoral degree by studying the role of the H1 histone protein of Neurospora crassa in gene expression and epigenetics under the supervision of Prof. Alberto Rosa. Then I joined the laboratory of Prof. Robin Allshire at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, as a postdoctoral fellow, starting my long-term relationship with the highly tractable fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe in 2004. There, I investigated the epigenetic mechanisms by which heterochromatin established CENP-A histone variant at centromeres, a fundamental process that is required for kinetochore assembly and proper chromosome segregation. In 2009, I continued my training with Prof. Arshad Desai at the University of California, San Diego, where I dissected the contribution of distinct domains of CENP-A to chromosome segregation using genetic and live-cell imaging approaches. Since 2012, I have been a member of Dr. Shiv Grewal’s laboratory at the Laboratory of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, first as a Research Fellow and currently as a Staff Scientist.

Research Interest

chromosome segregation, centromere, fission yeast genetics, epigenetics, heterochromatin, kinetochore