Rate My Professor Yannick Jacob

Yannick Jacob is a tenured Associate Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale University, where he serves as Track Director for Plant Molecular Biology. Born in Quebec, Canada, he obtained his B.Sc. in 2001 and M.Sc. in 2003 in Biochemistry from Université de Montréal. His M.Sc. research with B. Franz Lang focused on the evolution of tmRNAs and their roles in regulating protein translation in bacteria. Jacob earned his Ph.D. in Plant Genetics in 2008 from Indiana University Bloomington in the laboratory of Scott D. Michaels, studying the molecular genetics of flowering time in Arabidopsis and epigenetic regulation of DNA replication. His doctoral work led to the discovery of novel chromatin-modifying proteins regulating DNA replication in plants. After his Ph.D., he was a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University Biology Department from 2009 to 2010 and then at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory from 2010 to 2015 in Rob Martienssen's lab. There, as an HHMI Research Associate and recipient of fellowships from Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec (FRQS), he discovered that single amino acid differences between histone variants regulate chromatin-modifying proteins, unveiling a new layer of epigenetic regulation conserved in all eukaryotes.

Jacob's research centers on epigenetic mechanisms affecting genome expression and replication in plants and animals, particularly the roles of histone variants and post-translational marks in DNA replication and epigenetic stability in non-dividing cells. His lab develops chromatin modulation techniques to enhance CRISPR genome engineering efficiency in plants. Highly influential publications include “ATXR5 and ATXR6 are H3K27 monomethyltransferases required for chromatin structure and gene silencing” (Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, 2009; 355 citations), “Regulation of heterochromatic DNA replication by histone H3 lysine 27 methyltransferases” (Nature, 2010; 217 citations), “Selective methylation of histone H3 variant H3.1 regulates heterochromatin replication” (Science, 2014; 207 citations), “Increased efficiency of targeted mutagenesis by CRISPR/Cas9 in plants using heat stress” (The Plant Journal, 2018; 311 citations), and “The histone H3.1 variant regulates TONSOKU-mediated DNA repair during replication” (Science, 2022). He serves on the editorial board of The Plant Cell and has given invited seminars, including at the University of Pennsylvania.