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