Wolf Reik FRS^[1] is a German molecular biologist and an honorary group leader at the Babraham Institute, honorary professor of Epigenetics at the University of Cambridge and associate faculty at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.^[2][3][4] He was announced as the director of Altos Labs Cambridge Institute when the company launched on 19 January 2022.^[5]

Wolf Reik studies how additional information can be added to the genome through a range of processes collectively called epigenetics. He discovered some of the key epigenetic mechanisms important for mammalian development, physiology, genome reprogramming, and human diseases. His early work led to the discovery that the molecular mechanism of genomic imprinting is based on DNA methylation.^[6] He uncovered non-coding RNA^[7] and chromatin looping^[8] regulating imprinted genes, which he showed to be involved in fetal nutrition, growth, and disease.^[9] He found that the environment influences epigenetic programming in embryos, with changes in gene expression persisting in adults and their offspring.

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