Associate Professor Jan J. Zylicz wants to understand how the embryo’s environment affects its development and life after birth. This is relevant when the embryo is cultured after an in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). Associate Professor Zylicz and his team study how such an environment is sensed by the embryo and how it affects the way it produces energy. This in turn directly impacts which genes are being switched on and off. By using state-of-the-art technology, Associate Professor Zylicz and his team provide deep mechanistic insights into these processes. Improved understanding of how the embryo adapts to altered environments could help improve the efficiency of IVFs.

Associate Professor Zylicz is a principal investigator at reNEW’s reSOLVE theme at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is a recipient of the prestigious Sapere Aude (DFF) and Lundbeck Fellowships.

In his previous work with Professor Azim Surani at the Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, UK and Professor Edith Heard at the Institut Curie in Paris, France and at EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany, Associate Professor Zylicz has contributed to our understanding of how genes are turned off in early mouse development. Since the establishment of his team in 2020, Associate Professor Zylicz focuses on how human and mouse embryos interact with their environments.