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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 sources, dynamics and phenotypic impact of this heritable epigenetic variation, both from an empirical and from a theoretical standpoint.

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Group Profile

We are part of the Groningen Bioinformatics Centre (GBiC) at the University of Groningen (RUG). The GBiC is a member of Groningen Biomolecular and Biotechnology Institute (GBB) which functions within the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (FMNS). We are housed in the new Centre for Life Sciences at the Zernike complex. You can find us here! Current and former group members have come from a diversity of fields such as quantitative genetics, mathematics, physics, computer science, engineering and bioinformatics. If you have one of these or a related background you may want to work with us!

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Key Publications

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*

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.