• Date of birth: December 10, 1956
• Place of birth: Lohr am Main, Germany
• Nationality: German
• Marital status: married

• 1978-1980 University of Erlangen, Germany
• 1980-1982 University of Heidelberg
• 1983 Diploma in Molecular Biology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) Heidelberg
• 1983-1987 Ph.D. studies at European Molecular Biology Laboratories (EMBL) Heidelberg Supervisor: Dr. Rolf Müller Thesis title: "Structure-function analysis of viral fos oncogenes"
• 1987 Ph.D. in Molecular Biology

• 1988-1993 Postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. R. Grosschedl Department of Microbiology and Immunlogy, UCSF, San Francisco
• 1990-1993 Special Fellow of the Leukemia Society of America
• 1994-2001 Group Leader at the Institute of Molecular Pathology (I.M.P.), Vienna
• since 2002 Senior Scientist at the Institute of Molecular Pathology (I.M.P.), Vienna
• 2000 Honorary positions: Venia Legendi (Habilitation) at the Faculty of Microbiology and Genetics, University of Vienna

In eukaryotes, both epigenetic control of gene regulation and the functional organization of chromosomes depend on higher-order chromatin organization. Within the last three years, great progress has been made in understanding the functional implications of histone methylation, in particular through the characterization of histone methyltransferases (HMTases) that direct the site-specific methylation of lysines located within the histone H3 N-terminus. Thus, histone lysine methylation has emerged as a central epigenetic modification in the organization of eukaryotic chromatin with far-reaching implications for the regulation of cell proliferation, cell-type differentiation, overall development, gene expression, genome stability, and the genesis of cancer.

1. Garcia-Cao, M., O'Sullivan, R., Peters, A.H., Jenuwein, T., Blasco, M.A. (2004)
   Epigenetic regulation of telomere length in mammalian cells by the Suv39h1 and Suv39h2 histone methyltransferases.
   Nature Genetics 2004 36, 94-99.
2. Peters, A.H., Kubicek, S., Mechtler, K., O'Sullivan, R.J., Derijck, A.A., Perez-Burgos, L., Kohlmaier, A., Opravil, S., Tachibana, M., Shinkai, Y., Martens, J.H. and Jenuwein, T. (2003)
   Partitioning and plasticity of repressive histone methylation states in mammalian chromatin.
   Mol. Cell 12, 1577-1589.
3. Silva, J., Mak, W., Zvetkova, I., Appanah, R., Nesterova, T.B., Webster, Z., Peters, A.H., Jenuwein, T., Otte, A.P. and Brockdorff, N. (2003)
   Establishment of histone H3 methylation on the inactive X chromosome requires transient recruitment of Eed-Enx1 polycomb group complexes.
   Dev. Cell 4, 481-495.
4. Jenuwein, T. (2002)
   Molecular biology. An RNA-guided pathway for the epigenome.
   Science 297, 2215-2218.
5. Peters, A.H., Mermoud, J.E., O'Carroll, D., Pagani, M., Schweizer, D., Brockdorff, N. and Jenuwein, T. (2002)
   Histone H3 lysine 9 methylation is an epigenetic imprint of facultative heterochromatin.
   Nature Genetics 30, 77-80.
6. Peters, A. H., O'Carroll, D., Scherthan, H., Mechtler, K., Sauer, S., Schofer, C., Weipoltshammer, K., Pagani, M., Lachner, M., Kohlmaier, A., Opravil, S., Doyle, M., Sibilia, M. and Jenuwein, T. (2001)
   Loss of the Suv39h histone methyltransferases impairs mammalian heterochromatin and genome stability.
   Cell 107, 323-337.
7. Lachner, M., O'Carroll, D., Rea, S., Mechtler, K., and Jenuwein, T. (2001).
   Methylation of histone H3 lysine 9 creates a binding site for HP1 proteins.
   Nature 410, 116-120.