DrMikhail Spivakov

Mikhail Spivakov is a Programme Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Clinical Sciences, Imperial College Faculty of Medicine.

Dr Spivakov's research group aims to decipher the ground rules of gene regulation and establish their functional interplay in biological phenomena involving global changes in phenotype, such as in cell differentiation and activation. The group's current focus is on the role of non-coding DNA elements such as enhancers in integrating and transmitting gene regulatory information.

The team combine experimental and computational approaches to study these questions, capitalising on our previous work on promoter-enhancer relationships, organisation of DNA regulatory elements and population genomics. Their particular interest is in human primary cells as models, and in genetic and epigenetic variation as “natural perturbations” in the system.

The team's ultimate goal is to generate comprehensive functional models of gene control “logic” underlying cellular decisions. Interrogation and validation of these models will pinpoint key individual players (regulatory elements, genes, extrinsic signals) and their regulatory relationships in these processes and shed light on how they are remodelled in disease.