The School is organised by Prof. Eran Meshorer from the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences.

Chromatin structure, regulation and plasticity dictate many of the nuclear processes, e.g. replication, transcription, cell cycle, protein dynamics, chromatin modifications, and more - all of which ultimately facilitate or repress changes in transcription, either locally or globally. Chromatin is the basic regulatory unit of life and the main scaffold for epigenetic regulation. As such, it controls developmental and functional states of all cells, including pluripotency and pluripotent stem cells. Differentiation of embryonic stem cells into specialized cells involves dramatic changes in gene expression patterns, tightly correlated with alterations in DNA and histone modification states and subsequent global changes in chromatin plasticity. In recent years, methods to study chromatin have dramatically improved and expanded to both single cells and genome-wide global approaches, allowing a systems-level understanding of epigenetic regulation. Here we bring together leading researchers to discuss recent topics on chromatin and epigenetic regulation in the context of stem cells and pluripotency, lineage choice, and more.