The central research aim in our group is to understand how genome activity is regulated during early stages of mammalian development and how regulatory and genome structure variations can contributes to human disease. For this, we search for and identify distal acting cis-regulatory sequences, and study how they act on their target genes and how these are organized in the 3D structure of the chromatin and in gene regulatory networks underlying a specific biological state. Methodologically, we use a combination of bioinformatics and data analysis tools, structural genomics, genome-wide analysis, gene-editing using the CRISPR/Cas9 system, and functional tests using transgenic animal models and stem cells.