Susan M. Gasser

Susan M. Gasser (born 1955) is a Swiss molecular biologist. From 2004 to 2019 she was the director of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland, where she also led a research group from 2004 until 2021. She was in parallel professor of molecular biology at the University of Basel until April 2021. Since January 2021, Susan Gasser is director of the ISREC Foundation, which supports translational cancer research. She is also professor invité at the University of Lausanne in the department of fundamental microbiology. She is an expert in quantitative biology and studies epigenetic inheritance and genome stability. Recipient of multiple swiss and European awards, she was named member of the US Academy of Sciences in 2022.

Early career Susan Gasser received her doctorate from the University of Basel in biochemistry in 1982 at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, after a BA at the University of Chicago with an honors thesis in biophysics (1979). For her PhD she developed an in vitro system for the import of mitochondrial proteins, demonstrating its energy-dependence and identifying compartment-specific processing pathways for protein import, advised by Gottfried (Jeff) Schatz. As a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Geneva with Ulrich K. Laemmli, she established roles for topoisomerase II in metaphase chromosome structure (Gasser et al., JMB 1986) and for A/T-rich sequences in long-range chromatin folding (Gasser and Laemmli, Cell 1986). She established her own laboratory at the ISREC Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research in Epalinges in 1986.

Career Gasser led a research group at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research in Epalinges sur Lausanne until 2001. There she pioneered live fluorescence imaging of telomeres and repressed chromatin in budding yeast, coupled with biochemical and genetic approaches to understand chromosome structure and nuclear organization. She was named professor of molecular biology at the University of Geneva in 2001, prior to moving to lead the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, as its director, in 2004. At the FMI she led a research group studying the spatial organization of double-strand break repair and checkpoint activation in budding yeast, and established and exploited means to study the spatial organization and genetic control of heterochromatin in C. elegans. From 2005–2021 she also held the position of full professor at the University of Basel. Since February 2021, she is the director of the ISREC Foundation, which built and maintains the new Agora institute of translational cancer research in Lausanne, Switzerland. Susan Gasser also holds the position of guest professor at the University of Lausanne.

Initially studying chromatin organization in budding yeast, her laboratory combined genetic, biochemical and fluorescence microscopy approaches, developing quantitative live imaging tools to study the subnuclear dynamics of DNA loci in living cells. Her work elucidated roles of histone modifications and turnover in genome stability and in the spatial organization of chromatin in the interphase nucleus, with an emphasis on the function of subnuclear compartments both in yeast, and in C. elegans during tissue differentiation.

Gasser has served on review boards and advisory councils throughout Switzerland, Europe. 1979-1982: University of Basel (Biozentrum) PhD Magna cum laude in biochemistry, thesis advisor: Prof. G. Schatz 2022 Elected international member of the National Academy of Sciences USA 2021 Honorary doctorate, University of Fribourg, Switzerland 2016 Honorary doctorate, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic 2016 Lee Hartwell Award of the Genetics Society of America 2014 Doctorat honoris causa, University of Lausanne 2013 Member of the EC Presidents Science and Technology advisory Council (PSTAC) 2013 Weizmann Institute, Women in Science Award 2011 Prix International de l'INSERM, France 2013 The shelterin protein POT-1 anchors C. elegans telomeres through SUN-1 at the nuclear periphery. J Cell Biol, 203:727-35, Ferreira HC, Towbin BD, Jegou T, Gasser SM 2013 Checkpoint kinases and nucleosome remodelers enhance global chromatin mobility in response to DNA damage. Genes Dev, 27:1999-2008. doi:10.1101/gad.222992.113, Seeber A, Dion V, Gasser SM 2013 Cohesin and the nucleolus constrain the mobility of spontaneous repair foci. EMBO Rep. 14:984-991, Dion V, Kalck V, Seeber A, Schleker T, Gasser SM 2013 SIR proteins and the assembly of silent chromatin in budding yeast. Annu Rev Genet. 47:275-306, Kueng S, Oppikofer M, Gasser SM 2012 Step-wise methylation of histone H3K9 positions chromosome arms at the nuclear periphery in C. elegans embryos. Cell, 150:934-947, Towbin BD, Gonzalez-Aguilera C, Sack R, Gaidatzis D, Kalck V, Meister P, Askjaer P, Gasser SM 2012 Increased dynamics of double strand breaks requires Mec1, Rad9 and the homologous recombination machinery. Nat. Cell Biol. 14:502-509, Dion V, Kalck V, Horigome C, Towbin BD, Gasser SM 2012 Targeted INO80 enhances subnuclear chromatin movement and ectopic homologous recombination. Genes Dev 26:369-38 Neumann FR, Dion V, Gehlen L, Tsai-Pflugfelder M, Schmid R, Taddei A, Gasser SM 2008 Functional Targeting of DNA Damage to a Nuclear Pore-associated SUMO-dependent Ubiquitin ligase. Science, 322, 597 - 602 Nagai S, Dubrana K, Tsai-Pflugfelder M, Davidson MB, Roberts TM, Brown GW, Varela E, Hediger F, Gasser SM* and Krogan NJ 2005 Automatic tracking of individual fluorescence particles - Application to the study of chromosome dynamics. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 14, 1372 – 1383 Sage D, Neumann FR, Hediger F, Gasser SM and Unser M 2004 INO80 recruitment by H2A phosphorylation links ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling with DNA double-strand break repair. Cell, 119, 777 – 788 van Attikum H, Fritsch O, Hohn B and Gasser SM

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