Michael Chang

Michael Chang received his PhD degree at the University of Toronto in 2005 under the supervision of Dr. Grant W. Brown, studying DNA damage response pathways using high-throughput functional genomics. After his PhD, he took a position at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) in Lausanne as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Joachim Lingner, whose research is focused on telomerase and chromosome end replication. During this time, he determined that the processivity of yeast telomerase is significantly enhanced at critically short telomeres in a manner dependent upon the ATM-ortholog Tel1.
In 2008, Michael moved to the lab of Dr. Rodney Rothstein at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York. He has continued to study factors that regulate telomerase, including the effect of changes in dNTP pools on telomerase-mediated telomere length homeostasis.
He has also become interested in telomerase-independent modes of telomere maintenance, termed ALT (for Alternative Lengthening of Telomeres). In yeast, ALT cells are called ‘survivors’ and maintain their telomeric DNA via recombination-based processes. Michael has discovered that long telomeres are preferentially extended in emerging survivors.

Michael Chang joined ERIBA as an Assistant Professor in 2011 where he continues studying both telomerase-dependent and telomerase-independent telomere maintenance mechanisms.[vimeo id=”52145305″ align=”center” mode=”normal” autoplay=”no”]