Sean D Taverna, PhD

Research Program: Cancer Biology Faculty Rank: Dean of the Graduate School Campus: University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College: College of Medicine Department: Provost

Cancer Research Interest

• Disease Site Focus: Multiple Myeloma, Brain, Breast, No Specific Disease Site, Melanoma, Leukemia/ Lymphoma, Head and Neck
• Research Focus Area: Detection, Diagnosis/ Prognosis, Treatment
• Type of Research: Translational, Basic
• Research Keywords: Histone, Chromatin, Epigenetics, DNA Damage, Transcription
• Research Interest Statement: The Taverna lab focuses on characterizing the molecular links leading to establishment and maintenance of epigenomes, with respect to proteins and post-translational histone modifications found in chromatin. My group identifies roles for epigenetic regulators that bind histones (like chromodomains, PHD fingers, and Tudor domains) and histone modifying machinery (like acetyl-transferase complexes and methyltransferase complexes) using a variety of screens and purification techniques, and subsequently characterizes them biochemically, biologically, and structurally. The families of histone modifiers we study are involved in melanoma, leukemia and lymphoma, and head and neck cancers. We also help to better understand therapeutics for cancers like melanoma, and screen for novel inhibitors. We often use chromatin immunoprecipitation followed next-gen sequencing to generally determine roles for epigenetic modifications. We have an excellent track record of adapting biochemical and sequencing techniques to innovate new approaches for understanding in vivo epigenetic pathways, like a CRISPR-based affinity purification approach which has been applied to characterize epiproteomes in an unbiased manner, and a new multiplexed approach to understand correlation across many dozens of epigenetic factors at a single cell level.

Contact Information

• Email Address: STaverna@uams.edu

Recent Publications

• Stephens KE, Moore C, Vinson DA, [et al., including Taverna SD]. Identification of Regulatory Elements in Primary Sensory Neurons Involved in Trauma-Induced Neuropathic Pain. Molecular neurobiology. 2023. PMID: 37792259. PMCID: PMC10896855.
• Vinson DA, Stephens KE, O'Meally RN, [et al., including Taverna SD]. De novo methylation of histone H3K23 by the methyltransferases EHMT1/GLP and EHMT2/G9a. Epigenetics & chromatin. 2022 15(1):36. PMID: 36411491. PMCID: PMC9677696.
• Stephens KE, Zhou W, Renfro Z, [et al., including Taverna SD]. Global gene expression and chromatin accessibility of the peripheral nervous system in animal models of persistent pain. Journal of neuroinflammation. 2021 18(1):185. PMID: 34446036. PMCID: PMC8390277.
• Xu J, Zhao X, Mao F, [et al., including Taverna SD]. A Polycomb repressive complex is required for RNAi-mediated heterochromatin formation and dynamic distribution of nuclear bodies. Nucleic acids research. 2021 49(10):5407-5425. PMID: 33412588. PMCID: PMC8191774.
• Rizzardi LF, Hickey PF, Idrizi A, [et al., including Taverna SD]. Human brain region-specific variably methylated regions are enriched for heritability of distinct neuropsychiatric traits. Genome biology. 2021 22(1):116. PMID: 33888138. PMCID: PMC8061076.
• Waldrip ZJ, Jenjaroenpun P, DeYoung O, [et al., including Taverna SD]. Genome-wide Cas9 binding specificity in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. PeerJ. 2020 8:e9442. PMID: 32821531. PMCID: PMC7395602.