Series of interviews were written to present each PI of the CIG.
Most of them are already available on the new CIG Report’s website, and every week we will be displaying one of them in the newsletter.

Curiosity didn’t kill the cat

Transcriptional regulation by HCF-1

“What has always excited me is the concept of knowing something before anybody else does in the universe”says Prof. Winship Herr. From that perspective, he should probably be judged a happy man, and certainly someone who has chosen the right profession. Indeed, his experimental work on eukaryotic gene expression has led to important new insights in the field. But curiosity can be a stern teacher, operating with bizarre rules. It so happens that over the past years Prof. Herr’s research on HCF-1 – a transcriptional regulator involved in cell proliferation – has guided him into previously unexplored territories, such as metabolic pathologies and tumorigenesis.

“Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.”

Francis Crick (1916-2004)