Sdelci's research, leading the 'The Epigenetic Face of Cancer Metabolism Lab' at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), focuses on nuclear metabolism. Over the past seven years, she has demonstrated that metabolic enzymes are not merely cytoplasmic components but active and regulated elements of chromatin biology. These directly impact transcription, genome stability, DNA repair, cell identity, and response to cancer therapies.
Sdelci's scientific trajectory combines expertise in cell-cycle biology (acquired during her PhD at IRB Barcelona), chromatin perturbation and chemical biology (developed during her postdoctoral training at CeMM, Vienna), and nuclear metabolism in cancer. Since 2019, she has led her own laboratory at the CRG.
During her postdoctoral work, Sdelci demonstrated that the folate enzyme MTHFD1 localizes to chromatin and directly regulates transcription. This finding was one of the first mechanistic demonstrations that metabolic enzymes can perform local functions directly on chromatin, establishing the conceptual foundation for her independent research program.
Since then, her group has created an integrative framework combining chromatin proteomics, metabolomics, quantitative imaging, CRISPR screening, and computational biology. They have conducted the first chromatome-scale analyses across human tissues and cancer models, identifying approximately 250 chromatin-associated metabolic enzymes. They revealed that their association is dynamic and context-dependent, uncovering functions in transcriptional regulation, chromosome segregation, nuclear energy homeostasis, DNA repair, and cancer vulnerability.
Recently, the laboratory has explored whether chromatin itself can act as a metabolic entity. Chromatin, the largest macromolecule in the nucleus, contains a vast reservoir of metabolite-derived chemical groups. Her team's work suggests that chromatin not only regulates gene expression but can also control metabolite availability by capturing, storing, and releasing metabolites in response to specific cellular conditions, such as DNA damage or nutrient starvation. This proposes a fundamentally new view of chromatin as an active metabolic player shaping the nucleus's biochemical environment.
In her seminar, Dr. Sdelci will discuss the evolution of our understanding of nuclear metabolism, from the discovery of metabolic enzymes acting on chromatin to the emerging concept that chromatin itself can function as a dynamic metabolic reservoir.
