Our Team

Eric Greer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Genetics and Genomic Medicine with a secondary appointment with the Department of Genetics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Greer obtained his BA in Biochemistry from CWRU in 2004 and his PhD in Cancer Biology from Stanford in 2010 for work done in the lab of Anne Brunet, PhD. During his graduate work he did some of the first work to identify the molecular basis for how dietary restriction, a reduction in nutrients without starvation, can extend lifespan. He also demonstrated that chromatin modifications, particular histone H3 lysine 4 trimethylation, could regulate lifespan in C. elegans. Greer did postdoctoral training in Dr. Yang Shi’s lab at Harvard Medical School. As a post-doc he found that members of the H3K4 trimethylation complex he had identified as a graduate student that regulated lifespan, not only regulated longevity in the parental generation, but also in a transgenerational manner for 3 additional generations. This work demonstrated for the first time that longevity can be inherited epigenetically in a transgenerational manner. During his post-doc Eric began to decipher how non-genetic information is transmitted from ancestors to their descendants. In this search he identified a novel form of DNA modification, methylation on adenines, in metazoan that might be responsible for stable transgenerational epigenetic inheritance.

Greer started his lab in 2014 as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital before joining Washington University in St. Louis in 2023. Greer has received a number of prestigious awards to pursue this work including an NIH New Innovator Award and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

Arif Istiaq joined the lab from his PhD at Kumamoto University and is studying the molecular mechanisms by which imprinting is established and maintained.

Earned his PhD from IVRI in India and is studying the role of epitranscriptomics in regulating aging and learning and memory.

Gautam Sarkar earned his PhD from the National Institute of Immunology in New Delhi India and is studying the molecular mechanisms of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance and the role of epitranscriptomics in regulating aging.

Louis Song earned his BA from St. Louis University and is studying the role of epigenetics in the evolution of multicellularity.

Ariel Telger earned her BS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is studying the molecular mechanisms of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance.

Ethan Lee is studying the role of epigenetics in cellular altruism and multicellularity.

Xing Wang is a visiting undergraduate student from Sun Yat Sen University who is studying the role of histone mimetics in regulating tumorigenesis.

Emily Wu is studying regulation of imprinting.