David M. Gilbert PhD

David M. Gilbert is an American molecular biologist, known for their work in DNA replication. He is currently an investigator at the San Diego Biomedical Research Institute. Gilbert was formerly a Professor of Molecular Biology in the Department of Biological Science and Co-founder and Former Director of the Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Florida State University. Dr. Gilbert and his team showed that each type of cell had a unique replication timing program and that diseased cells had distinct alterations in the program. In this study, Dr. Gilbert and his team looked at how changes in the replication timing program impact the packing of DNA with its regulatory factors, collectively known as the epigenome. The epigenome is a regulatory factor that is believed to control the “identity” of the cell, and the functions that the cell will perform.