Victor G. Corces

Biosketch

Victor Corces is a molecular biologist recognized for his work in elucidating the three-dimensional arrangement of the chromatin in the nucleus. He is known particularly for his studies on the characterization of architectural proteins and the investigation of their role in mediating long-range interactions between distant regulatory sequences to control gene expression during cell differentiation and in response to environmental factors. Corces was born and grew up in Asturias, Spain. He graduated from the Complutense University of Madrid with a degree in chemistry and from the Autonoma University of Madrid in 1978 with a Ph. D. in chemistry. He was a postdoctoral fellow in molecular genetics at Harvard University. He joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University in 1982 and has been a Professor at Emory University since 2007. He was named an Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor and is a member of both the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

Research Interests

We are interested in understanding how the environment affects the epigenome to elicit changes that can be inherited from one generation to the next, and how these changes can result in disease states. We are also studying how effects of the environment on the epigenome respond to genetic variation in the non-coding genome. In particular, we are currently studying how chemicals present in the environment affect the location of CTCF in the genome to alter the three-dimensional organization of the chromosomes in germline cells, how these changes are transmitted to the embryo after fertilization, how they are propagated during differentiation of various cell lineages, and how these alterations cause obesity and autism in a manner that depends on variation in the non-coding genome.