Dr. rer. nat. Daniel Andergassen

Contact:

Dr. rer. nat. Daniel Andergassen

Technical University Munich
Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Biedersteiner Straße 29
80802 Munich, Germany

Email: daniel.andergassen(at)tum.de

Websites:
www.ipt.med.tum.de/en
www.andergassenlab.com

Research areas: Cardiovascular disease, Genetics, Epigenetics, Sex differences, Computational biology


Daniel Andergassen is DZHK Junior Research Group leader at the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology of the Technical University of Munich (TUM). His research bridges computational and experimental sciences to understand the impact of the non-coding genome on cardiovascular disease (CVD). Furthermore, he aims to elucidate the contribution of sex chromosomes to sex differences in CVD.

Research focus

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) occur and progress differently in men and women, resulting in CVD sex differences. Thus, identifying sex-biased protective mechanisms is fundamental for developing gender-specific treatments. Hormone differences have been suggested to account for CVD sex differences; however, hormone replacement therapies failed to provide cardioprotection, indicating that other biological factors contribute to sex disparities in CVD development. Other likely contributors are genes that escape female X chromosome inactivation, an understudied epigenetic phenomenon that has so far not been linked to sex differences in CVD. These so-called escaper genes have twice the gene dose in females (XX) compared to males (XY) and thus are likely to contribute to sex-based differences.

To systematically elucidate the molecular mechanism for sex differences in CVD, the Andergassen lab quantitatively evaluates the impact of sex chromosomes and hormones using sequencing approaches combined with disease and genetic mouse models. Daniel Andergassen's goal is to reveal relevant therapeutic candidates and new regulatory disease mechanisms that may form the foundation of new sex-specific therapies to treat CVD in humans.

Histological image of myocardial infarction in the mouse.

Key publications

Daniel Andergassen* and John L. Rinn* From genotype to phenotype: genetics of mammalian long non-coding RNAs in vivo Nat. Rev. Genet. 2021

Daniel Andergassen*, Zachary D Smith*, Helene Kretzmer, John L Rinn, Alexander Meissner. Diverse epigenetic mechanisms maintain parental imprints within the embryonic and extraembryonic lineages Dev. Cell 2021

Daniel Andergassen, Zachary D. Smith, Jordan P. Lewandowski, Chiara Gerhardinger, Alexander Meissner and John L. Rinn. In vivo Firre and Dxz4 deletion elucidates roles for autosomal gene regulation eLife 2019

Daniel Andergassen*, Markus Muckenhuber*, Philipp C. Bammer, Tomasz M. Kulinski, Hans-Christian Theussl, Takahiko Shimizu, Josef M. Penninger, Florian M. Pauler* and Quanah J. Hudson*. The Airn RNA does not require any DNA elements within its locus to silence distant imprinted genes PLOS Genetics 2019

Daniel Andergassen, Christoph P. Dotter, Daniel Wenzel, Verena Sigl, Philipp C. Bammer, Markus Muckenhuber, Daniela Mayer, Tomasz M. Kulinski, Hans-Christian Theussl, Josef M. Penninger, Christoph Bock, Denise P. Barlow*, Florian M. Pauler* and Quanah J. Hudson*. Mapping the mouse Allelome reveals tissue-specific regulation of allelic expression eLife 2017

Daniel Andergassen*, Christoph P Dotter*, Tomasz M Kulinski, Philipp M Guenzl, Philipp C Bammer, Denise P Barlow*, Florian M Pauler*, Quanah J Hudson*. Allelome.PRO, a pipeline to define allele-specific genomic features from high-throughput sequencing data Nucleic Acids Research 2015