Illustration of the replicative helicase detecting a toxic DNA lesion and triggering its repair in frog egg extracts.
Our department held its retreat at the Chaminade Resort near Santa Cruz CA on Sept. 9-11 2026. Over 100 department members attended, with dozens of trainee talks and posters being presented. Each year the department awards "Best Talk", "Best Paper", and "Best Poster" prizes. We're delighted to announce that the Chistol lab "cleaned up" at this year's retreat: Dr. Benjamin Duewell received the "Best Talk" prize, while Dr. Jinho Park received the "Best Paper" prize (manuscript accepted for publication in Nature, still under embargo for the next ~month).
Congratulations to Jinho and Benjamin!!!
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We are excited to announce that the "sequel" to our 2024 Cell paper has been accepted for publication in Nature Communications (September 2026).
Congratulations to the entire Replication Initiation Team!
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Our manuscript titled "Single-Molecule Imaging Reveals the Mechanism of Bidirectional Replication Initiation in Metazoa" was officially accepted for publication in Cell. The project started in the summer of 2020 (that first glorious COVID summer) when Scott started imaging how GINS is recruited to replication origins. He later did the same for Cdc45. In 2021 Riki joined the project and focused on imaging firing factors (TopBP1, RecQL4, and finally DONSON). It took a while to explore various hypotheses, sort out various technical difficulties, develop new assays, and develop new tools for analyzing the data. We submitted the paper in November 2023, and after a somewhat bumpy review process, the paper was accepted on 13th of May 2024 :)
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Our lab is using real-time single-molecule imaging to (i) study how eukaryotes replicate/repair their DNA; (ii) dissect molecular mechanisms involved in maintaining large/complex genomes; and (iii) understand how multi-subunit molecular machines like the replisome are regulated.
We are looking for curious and highly-motivated undergrads, graduate students, and postdocs to join our team. Since our lab operates at the intersection of biology, chemistry, and physics - we welcome people with very diverse backgrounds, mindsets, skills, experience, and training .
If you find our work exciting we encourage you to reach out by email at chistol@stanford.edu . If you are on campus you are always welcome to drop by the lab to chat.
Prospective Graduate Students
If you are applying to graduate programs at Stanford and are interested in our lab or department - pls contact us - it will be our pleasure to answer any of your questions.
Graduate Students
If you are a first year graduate student and are interested in a rotation - pls email us, or even better - visit our lab.
Postdoc Applicants
We are currently accepting applications for postdocs. Please see our Contact page for details on how to submit your application.
ADDRESS:
Chistol Lab
CCSR 3130, Mail Code 5174
Chemical and Systems Biology Department
Stanford School of Medicine
Stanford, CA 94305
Principal Investigator:
Gheorghe Chistol
chistol@stanford.edu
Tel: 650-498-1429
Administrative Associate:
Emma Atul
ehammock@stanford.edu
Tel: 650-725-0678
