Andrea Cerase, MSc, PhD, AFHEA
Andrea was born in Procida, a little island in the bay of Naples, Italy. After graduating from the high school in Ischia he moved to Naples to study Molecular Biology at the University of Naples Federico II. For his Bachelor degree he worked at the Italian National Cancer Institute under the supervision of prof. Nicola Normanno. He received his MSc degree in Molecular Biology (honours) in 2002. Subsequently, he joined Prof. Maurizio D’Esposito’s group at Institute of Genetics and Biophysics (IGB-National Council of Research, CNR), Naples, studying the role of chromatin and DNA modifications in cancer - and this was the time when his interest in epigenetics began. He decided to stay in D’Esposito’s lab to do his PhD, focusing on the epigenetic mechanism of SPRY3 gene silencing in humans.
As a part of his Doctoral training Andrea went to Neil Brockdorff’s lab in 2006 as a visiting graduate student. Here he became interested in X inactivation and decided to choose this topic for his postdoc. After having his viva and receiving his PhD degree, Andrea joined the Brockdorff lab later that year. His project was to study the epigenetics of X chromosome inactivation, focusing on understanding how Xist mediates gene silencing. In particular, he was interested in the interplay between Xist and Polycomb Repressive Complexes. He proved that Xist and PRC2 do not interact directly, moving the balance of the much-debated Xist-mediated PRC2 recruitment model toward an indirect recruitment one. Building on this he set up a genome-wide RNAi screen to identify novel factors involved in X chromosome inactivation and run a set of screens. Based on his pioneering system he has identified important candidates from these screens.
At the end of 2013 Andrea decided to move on with his career and returned to Italy. Back home, Andrea joined Prof. Phil Avner’s group at the EMBL Monterotondo in 2014 to study the initiation phase of mouse X inactivation, in particular the role of chromatin remodelers in Xist and Tsix regulation.
In 2018 Andrea returned to the UK as independent scientist. He lives in London, UK.
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