Dr. Bedford’s laboratory focuses on two research topics: 1) elucidating the biological role of arginine methylation – an abundant modification that has been implicated in signal transduction, transcriptional control and DNA repair, and 2) developing a protein domain microarray platform to interrogate the role of posttranslational modifications in driving protein-protein interactions in signal transduction. They have generated targeted disruptions and gain-of-function mouse models for these arginine methyltransferase enzymes, with a primary focus on CARM1. Using their protein-domain microarray platform, they have identified and characterized novel protein interactions; they have used these arrays to “read” the histone code. They have identified a number of novel proteins that interact with lysine and arginine methylated motifs, as well as with small molecules that can compete with these interactions. Recently, the Bedford lab expanded their array platform to include all the human phospho-reader domains, acetyl-reader domains, and most of the human PDZ domains and ubiquitin-binding domains.