Dr. Clarissa Coveney

I am a musculoskeletal development and disease biologist whose research integrates mechanobiology, evolution, functional genomics, and epigenetics to understand the genetic and environmental drivers of musculoskeletal traits and diseases. My Postdoctoral work has uncovered how context specific non-coding regulatory elements modulate joint morphology and cartilage homeostasis using mouse models and humanized variants. Further, I have applied advanced genomic technologies to understand the context dependent role of ancient Neanderthal variants in modern human biology contributing to trait changes such as joint shape and disease. My research ambitions are to integrate elements (mechanobiology) from my PhD research with my newly acquired skills from my Postdoctoral research to focus on how mechanical forces at the tissue and matrix level influence chromatin structure and enhancer activity, what I define as “mechanoepigenetics”, to modulate gene expression and disease risk.