Publications

The Werner Lab at the University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT)

  • coming soon!

Michael's Post-doc with Ralf J. Sommer at The Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology (Tübingen, Germany)


  • Renahan, T.S., Lo, W.S., Werner, M.S., Rochat, J., Herrmann, M., Sommer, R.J. (2021) Nematode biphasic “boom and bust” dynamics are dependent on host bacterial load while linking dauer and mouth-form polyphenisms. Environmental Microbiology. doi:10.1111/1462-2920.15438.

  • Theska T, Sieriebriennikov B, Wighard SS, Werner MS*, Sommer RJ*. (2020). Geometric Morphometrics of Microscopic Animals as Exemplified by Model Nematodes. Nature Protocols. 10.1038/s41596-020-0347-z. (*co-corresponding author)

  • Werner, M.S.*, Claaßen, M.H.*, Renahan, T.*, Dardiry, M., and Sommer, R.J. (2018). Adult Influence on Juvenile Phenotypes by Stage-Specific Pheromone Production. iScience 10, 123–134. (*co-first author)

  • Werner, M.S., Sieriebriennikov, B., Prabh, N., Loschko, T., Lanz, C., and Sommer, R.J. (2018). Young genes have distinct gene structure, epigenetic profiles, and transcriptional regulation. Genome Res. 28, 1675–1687.

  • Werner, M.S., Sieriebriennikov, B., Loschko, T., Namdeo, S., Lenuzzi, M., Dardiry, M., Renahan, T., Sharma, D.R., and Sommer, R.J. (2017). Environmental influence on Pristionchus pacificus mouth form through different culture methods. Sci. Rep. 7, 7207.

  • Sommer, R.J., Dardiry, M., Lenuzzi, M., Namdeo, S., Renahan, T., Sieriebriennikov, B., and Werner, M.S. (2017). The genetics of phenotypic plasticity in nematode feeding structures. Open Biol. 7.


Michael's PhD with Alex J. Ruthenburg at the University of Chicago (Chicago, IL)


  • Gupta, A., Xu, J., Lee, S., Tsai, S.T., Zhou, B., Kurosawa, K., Werner, M.S., Koide, A., Ruthenburg, A.J., Dou, Y., et al. (2018). Facile target validation in an animal model with intracellularly expressed monobodies. Nature Chemical Biology 14, 895–900.

  • Werner, M.S., Sullivan, M.A., Shah, R.N., Nadadur, R.D., Grzybowski, A.T., Galat, V., Moskowitz, I.P., and Ruthenburg, A.J. (2017). Chromatin-enriched lncRNAs can act as cell-type specific activators of proximal gene transcription. Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol. 24, 596–603.

*Corresponding highlight in NSMB: Gayen & Kalantry, Chromatin-enriched lncRNAs: a novel class of enhancer RNAs


  • Yang, X.H., Nadadur, R.D., Hilvering, C.R., Bianchi, V., Werner, M., Mazurek, S.R., Gadek, M., Shen, K.M., Goldman, J.A., Tyan, L., et al. (2017). Transcription-factor-dependent enhancer transcription defines a gene regulatory network for cardiac rhythm. Elife 6.

  • Werner, M.S., and Ruthenburg, A.J. (2015). Nuclear Fractionation Reveals Thousands of Chromatin-Tethered Noncoding RNAs Adjacent to Active Genes. Cell Rep. 12, 1089–1098.

*faculty 1000 recommendation


  • Werner, M., and Ruthenburg, A.J. (2011). The United States of Histone Ubiquitylation and Methylation. Molecular Cell 43, 5–7.