Please read Dr. Muir’s article in the Journal of Biological Chemistry titled, “The spread of chemical biology into chromatin.“
Contemporary chromatin research continues to exert a considerable gravitational pull, drawing in scientists from fields as diverse as genetics, bioinformatics, biophysics, and chemical biology. This broad attraction stems from the underlying complexity of chromatin biology, the study of which we now realize benefits from a “circle the wagons”-type approach, wherein tools and ideas from disparate areas are productively integrated to reveal fundamental mechanisms. The late Dave Allis, to whom this issue is dedicated, understood the importance of this multidisciplinary approach as much as anyone in the chromatin field. His scientific journey and explorations had revealed just how intricate the fundamental molecular mechanisms attendant to chromatin regulation were likely to be. Consequently, he came to understand that approaching these problems from a single direction, say genetics, would be insufficient to reveal all aspects of the mechanism. Ultimately, Allis was driven by a deep desire to get to the bottom of the various phenomena he had uncovered, something that simply required expertise beyond his formidable skills as a biochemist. Dave was unusually prescient when it came to identifying the types of expertise that were needed to advance the field. As importantly, he could also draw scientists into the area through his ability to distill and synthesize emerging findings in the chromatin biology area into easy-to-grasp concepts that one could rally around and ultimately test. It would be hard to argue that this multidisciplinary approach, of which Allis was a great champion, has not accelerated discoveries in the chromatin field. To read the full article.
The spread of chemical biology into chromatin. Hegazi E, Muir TW. J Biol Chem. 2024 Nov;300(11):107776. PMID: 39276931 PMCID: PMC11555340 DOI: 1016/j.jbc.2024.107776