Affiliation: University of California, Los Angeles

Roxane Verdikt is a Belgian molecular biologist who earned her PhD in 2019 at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in the service of molecular virology led by Pr. Carine Van Lint. Her thesis focused on the epigenetic and transcriptional regulation of Human Immunodeficiency Virus type 1 (HIV-1). Notably, she studied how DNA methylation accumulates on the HIV-1 promoter during latent infections. She also investigated enhancer-mediated control of gene expression by studying how HIV-1 genes are specifically expressed in macrophages. At the beginning of 2020, Roxane joined the laboratory of Pr. Patrick Allard at the University of California, Los Angeles to study epigenetic regulation in germ cell specification. Her main scientific interests reside in the regulation of gene expression in the context of host-pathogen interplay as well as in the context of adaptation to environmental cues.