Mese: Settembre 2025

A bunch of people from different corners of the world, each walking very different paths in life, were brought together by a shared, slightly mad obsession with understanding the incredibly complex world of chromatin that nature has been fine-tuning for billions of years.

I’m Nabodit Bhattacharya, an early-stage researcher in the Chrom_Rare consortium. By training, I’m a biologist, often found editing genes or building disease models to peek into the mysterious molecular machinery behind rare conditions. When I’m not in the lab, you’ll probably find me buried in books on Philosophy and Vedanta, hopping between cafés and restaurants (food is a serious hobby for me), or traveling. I especially enjoy going on hikes—sometimes even with strangers, who usually don’t stay strangers for long.

For me, Chrom_Rare is more than just research—it’s a platform to learn, grow, and connect. The training weeks and symposiums across Europe have been amazing opportunities to exchange ideas, laugh, argue, and bond with my fellow doctoral candidates. Thanks to secondments, we also get to visit partner labs, collaborate, and push science forward together. 

And here’s a tip: if you stumble upon a group of scientists in a café or a restaurant arguing (loudly) about things like the opening and closing of chromatin or the stiffness and softness of the cell nucleus, there’s a very good chance you’ve found us. We move around a lot—so don’t be surprised if you bump into us anywhere in Europe! 

#chromatinopaties #epigenetics #MSCA

Hi, I’m Debapratim, a doctoral student at the Université de Montpellier and CHU Montpellier, and part of the Chrom_Rare Consortium, where I work on elucidating chromatinopathies by using the cute fish behind me in this picture!

For the past year and half, I have been focusing on rare chromatinopathies like Kabuki Syndrome and CDK13 related disorder, and using the zebrafish I attempt to dissect the pathophysiology of this rare diseases and work towards a complete understanding of the cellular and molecular processes that lead to the various manifestations that these diseases cause in humans. My research mainly focuses on early developmental processes such as cardiac development and neural crest cell migration, which are affected due to these disorders. To this end, the zebrafish is a fantastic model, owing to its optical transparency and offering the ease of genetic tractability.

Not being an isolated and somewhat controlled system like cell culture systems, studying loss of function in an organism like the zebrafish can be quite tricky and difficult, owing to the extremely noisy nature of the model system. Despite this, there are plenty of insights to be gained on a cellular and organismal level, that opens up new avenues of exploration and research. 

I am incredibly thankful for this opportunity to be working at the forefront of a multinational collaborative effort to shed light on rare disease pathophysiology, the likes of which very few early career scientists experience. I look forward to keeping this collaborative spirit aloft and tackling one scientific problem after another!

#chromatinopaties #epigenetics