Population Epigenetics & Epigenomics

Technical University of Munich [TUM]

Department of Plant Sciences [Home]
Hans Eisenmann-Zentrum for Agricultural Sciences [HEZ]
Liesel-Beckmann-Str. 2
85354 Freising, Germany

Institute for Advanced Study [TUM-IAS]
Lichtenbergstr. 2a
85748 Garching, Germany

email:     frank[at]johanneslab[dot]org
email:     f.johannes[at]tum[dot]de
phone:  +49 8161 71 4139
Our main research interests

 Population epigenomics: One major aspect of our work is the development of computational methods for the characterization of epigenomic variation between individuals in a population. These ongoing methodological developments focus on the analysis of array- or NGS-based measurements of DNA methylation or histone modifications. Our aim is to produce user-friendly software that is widely applicable across organisms.

Population epigenetics: Particularly in plants, part of the epigenomic variation observed in one generation can be inherited to subsequent generations. A second major aspect of our work is to understand the origin, stability and phenotypic impact of this heritable epigenetic variation, both from an empirical and from a theoretical standpoint.

Key Publications

Taudt A, Colomé-Tatché M, Johannes F.
Genetic sources of population epigenomic variation.
Nature Reviews Genetics doi:10.1038/nrg.2016.45

van der Graaf A, Wardenaar R, Neumann DA, Taudt A, Shaw RG, Jansen RC, Schmitz RJ*, Colomé-Tatché M*, Johannes F*. (2015). Rate, spectrum and evolutionary dynamics of spontaneous epimutations.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA doi: 10.1073/pnas.1424254112.

Cortijo S, Wardenaar R, Colomé-Tatché M, Gilly A, Etcheverry M, Labadie K, Caillieux E, Hospital F, Aury J-M, Wincker P, Roudier F, Jansen RC, Colot V*, Johannes F* (2014).
Mapping the epigenetic basis of complex traits.
Science doi:10.1126/science.1248127.

Colomé-Tatché M, Cortijo S, Wardenaar R, Morgado L, Lahouze B, Sarazin A, Etcheverry M, Martin A, Feng S, Duvernois-Berthet E, Labadie K, Wincker P, Jacobsen SE, Jansen RC, Colot V*, Johannes F* (2012). Features of the Arabidopsis recombination landscape resulting from the combined loss of sequence variation and DNA methylation.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA doi:10.1073/pnas.1212955109.

Johannes F* and Colomé-Tatché M (2011). Quantitative epigenetics through epigenomic perturbation of isogenic lines.
Genetics 188:1015–1017.

Johannes F, Porcher E, Teixeira F, Saliba-Colombani V, Simon M, Agier N, Bulski A, Albuisson J, Heredia F, Bouchez D, Dillmann C, Guerche P, Hospital F, Colot V (2009).
Assessing the impact of transgenerational epigenetic variation on complex traits.
PLoS Genetics 5: e1000530.

Johannes F*, Colot V, Jansen RC (2008). Epigenome dynamics: A quantitative genetic perspective.
Nature Reviews Genetics 9: 883-890.