Prof. Albert Jeltsch studied Biochemistry at Medical University of Hannover, where he received his PhD in 1994 working on restriction endonucleases. Afterwards, he started his work on DNA methyltransferases and moved to University of Giessen where he received his Habilitation in 1999. He was appointed as Assistant Professor in Giessen, and moved in 2003 as Associated Professor in Biochemistry to Jacobs University Bremen. Since 2006 he was Full Professor in Biochemistry, and 2011 he moved to University Stuttgart, where he is currently heading the Institute of Biochemistry and Technical Biochemistry.
The group of Prof. Jeltsch is leading in the biochemical study and enzymology of DNA methyltransferases. In addition, he works in the field of Molecular Epigenetics where his group studies the specificity and activity of histone methyltransferases and methyl lysine reading domains providing seminal discoveries in both fields. Built on a long-standing expertise in protein design of DNA interacting enzymes, his group also develops and applies systems for epigenome editing in eukaryotic cells.
Prof. Jeltsch received the Gerhard-Hess award of the DFG in 1999 and the BioFuture Award of the Federal Minister of Research and Education (BMBF) in 2001. Since 1991, he has published more than 290 scientific papers many of them in international leading journals. His work received >26000 citations and he has an H-index of 80. He is Editor in Chief of Epigenetics & Chromatin, Academic Editor in Clinical Epigenetics and Genes and member in several Editorial Boards (including Nucleic Acids Res., BBA – Molecular Cell Research, ChemBioChem, Biochimie, Life, Epigenomics, Epigenomes).