Tessa is interested in the role of chromatin in transcriptional regulation. Specifically, she would like to know how cells orchestrate developmental decisions and utilize histone modifications and repressive proteins to mediate the correct transcriptional output. During her PhD, she investigated the mechanisms of the SMAD Transcription Factor-mediated transcriptional response to TGF-beta superfamily signalling. Specifically, she used an embryonic cell culture model to delineate the sequence of events occurring on chromatin in response to acute Activin/Nodal signalling, a pathway crucial for early embryonic development. By combining RNA-sequencing and ChIP-sequencing with coupled bioinformatic analysis, as well as biochemistry, in controlled time courses, she described the transcriptional changes occurring to different target genes and their genomic context.
Finding that mechanisms of transcription in response to an extracellular signal can be very diverse, she continued her interest in chromatin and transcriptional regulation during her post-doc, where she is investigating heterochromatin using C. elegans as a model system. She studies how different heterochromatin proteins (including the HP1 homologue), as well as H3K9methylation, are targeted to their genomic sites and how they function to repress transcription. Specifically, she is interested in their role in regulating repetitive elements in the genome, as well as their interaction with small RNAs. Finally, she is using C. elegans as a model to test the role of heterochromatin during physiological ageing. In the future, she hopes to continue disentangling aspects of different layers of chromatin regulation, to address the contribution of transcription factors, histone modifications and non-coding RNAs.