The cluster Proteinscience, proteomics and epigenetic signalling is active on three domains: neurodegeneration, infection and inflammation. For the first part the cluster studies for example the effects of hypoxia/ischemia and the role of hemeproteins herein and how this is perceived in metabolic active tissue such as brain. In the second part the virus-ghost relationship will be studie on intra- and extracellulair level. In the final part the effects of external influences (like xenobiotics, hormones, oxidative stress, nutrients,..) will be studied in relation to the protein(signal) function and (epi)genomic regulation. All these studies will be performed at the protein, proteome and epigenome level.

Following topics will be handled:

• Intracellular anti-HIV responses
• Extracellular anti-HIV responses
• Hypoxia/oxidative stress.
• Study of the structur/function of globin based oxygensensors
• Study of the epigenetic programming of inflammatory processes. 

Our cluster mainly uses proteomics, (epi)genomics and proteinscience technologies. For example we have available a flash-photolyses setup which anables us to determine the ligandbindingkinetics which is unique in Belgium.  Specific protein(signaling)functions can be analyzed using different expression- and interactionstudies of recombinant proteins in vitro/in vivo. For the epigenomics studies we will apply new chromatin-proteomic approaches (posttranslational histon/cofactor modifications) and new DNA-methylation-detectionmethods (pyrosequencing, MALDI, AIMS, RLGS, MSPA, bisulfietsequencing)