Kathrin Plath

Principal Investigator

About

Kathrin, originally from Germany, earned her master’s and doctorate degrees in cell biology from Humboldt University in Berlin. While she got her Ph.D. from Humboldt, she actually did her graduate work at Harvard Medical School in Dr. Tom Rapoport’s lab, where she cracked the code on protein translocation across the endoplasmic reticulum membrane.

For her postdoc, she headed to UCSF to join Barbara Panning’s lab, diving into the enigmatic world of X-chromosome inactivation. She discovered that polycomb proteins and H3K27me3 pile up on the inactive X chromosome in an Xist RNA-dependent manner. As result, H3K27me3 has become synonymous with X-inactivation and is the most widely used marker of the inactive X in and outside the field. Her findings supported the model that long-noncoding RNAs can, directly or indirectly, recruit chromatin-modifying complexes to their target sites.

Next stop: Boston, where she wrapped up her postdoc in Rudolf Jaenisch’s lab at MIT’s Whitehead Institute. There, she pinpointed Polycomb proteins as general regulators of developmental genes in mammalian cells and provided insight into the role of this repressive chromatin complex in the maintenance of pluripotency. She shed light on how these proteins maintain pluripotency by mapping out their targets with the then cutting-edge ChIP-chip method.

In 2006, Kathrin joined the faculty at UCLA. She’s now a big shot on the editorial boards of Cell, Science, and Cell Stem Cell, and has held top positions in the International Society for Stem Cell Research. To top it off, she’s an HHMI Faculty Scholar.

She serves on the editorial board of Cell, Science, Cell Stem Cell and other journals, and has held various leadership positions in the International Society for Stem Cell Research. She has also been selected as a HHMI Faculty Scholar and now is the Director of the Epigenomics, RNA and Gene Regulation Program of the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.

When she’s not in the lab, Kathrin loves hanging out with friends and family, and staying active with tennis, hiking, and skiing. Despite living in the US for ages, she still cheers for the German national soccer team during the World Cup—some habits die hard.