Dr. Alejandra Loyola is a Biochemist from Universidad de Chile. In 1997, she entered to the PhD program of Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA. Her thesis work, performed in the lab of Dr. Danny Reinberg, was focused on the characterization of RSF, a chromatin assembly factor identified in the Reinberg’s lab. After graduating in 2003, Dr. Loyola moved to the Institut Curie, in Paris, France, and worked at the lab of Dr. Geneviève Almouzni for her post-doctoral training. She investigated post-translational modifications occurring on histone H3 variants. During those years of training, she was awarded with an Institut Curie fellowship and then with an EMBO fellowship. In 2006 Dr Loyola started her second post-doctoral training at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, USA, in the lab of Dr. Sharon Dent. Her work focused on the enzymes involved in histone post-translational modifications. She was awarded with an Odyssey fellowship. In 2008 she established her own lab at Fundación Ciencia & Vida, where she is Head of the Epigenetics and Chromatin Lab. Her research focuses on understanding the mechanisms by which chromatin and its modifications regulate cellular processes. Her lab has three main areas of investigation: the analysis of post-translational modifications of histones before they are incorporated into chromatin, the role of the viral chromatin in the replication of the Hepatitis B Virus, and the characterization of the epigenetic modifications during the differentiation of T lymphocytes.
