In this episode of the Epigenetics Podcast, we caught up with Sir Adrian Bird, Buchanan Professor of Genetics at the University of Edinburgh to talk about his work on CpG islands, DNA methylation, and the role of DNA methylation in human diseases.
Adrian Bird has been a pioneer in studying the CpG dinucleotide sequence. The CpG dinucleotide is distributed genome-wide and has several properties expected of a genomic signaling module. The influence of CpG signaling on prozesses like development, differentiation, and disease is hardly understood. Adrian Bird's work indicates that proteins that bind methylated CpGs recruit chromatin modifying enzymes to promote gene silencing. On the other hand, proteins that bind unmethylated CpGs lead to the formation of active, open chromatin. These results suggest that CpGs have a gobal effect on genome activity.
In neurons MeCP2 is almost as abundant as histones and is probably one of the best studied Proteins that bind to methyl-CpGs. Children who lack MeCP2 acquire serious neurological disorders, in particular Rett Syndrome. Rett Syndrome is caused by defects of a single gene, which lead to the opportunity to study its molecular mechanism, which involves MeCP2 in detail. Adrian Bird created a mouse model of Rett Syndrome which has lead to the discovery that reintroducing a functional MeCP2 gene in mice can lead to a "curation" of the symptoms.
In this interview, podcast host Stefan Dillinger and Adrian discuss CpG islands, DNA methylation, and how the discovery of MeCP2 lead to the discovery of a possible treatment of Rett Syndrome.
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The role of DNA Methylation in Epilepsy (Katja Kobow)
MacroH2A Function in Development and Disease (Emily Bernstein)
Spatio-Temporal Alterations in Chromosome Dynamics (Jane Skok)
Chromatin Organization During Development and Disease (Marieke Oudelaar)
Enhancers and Chromatin Remodeling in Mammary Gland Development (Camila dos Santos)
The Role of SMCHD1 in Development and Disease (Marnie Blewitt)
Single-Molecule Imaging of the Epigenome (Efrat Shema)
Heterochromatin Protein 1 and its Influence on the Structure of Chromatin (Serena Sanulli)
The Effects of Early Life Stress on Mammalian Development (Catherine J. Peña)
Targeting COMPASS to Cure Childhood Leukemia (Ali Shilatifard)
Effects of Non-Enzymatic Covalent Histone Modifications on Chromatin (Yael David)
ATAC-Seq, scATAC-Seq and Chromatin Dynamics in Single-Cells (Jason Buenrostro)
Synthetic Chromatin Epigenetics (Karmella Haynes)
Development of Integrative Machine Learning Tools for Neurodegenerative Diseases (Enrico Glaab)
Ultraconserved Enhancers and Enhancer Redundancy (Diane Dickel)
Variants of Core Histones: Modulators of Chromatin Structure and Function (Sandra Hake)
DNA Methylation and Mammalian Development (Déborah Bourc'his)
Chromatin Analysis using Mass Spectrometry (Axel Imhof)
Chromatin Profiling: From ChIP to CUT&RUN, CUT&Tag and CUTAC (Steven Henikoff)
Effects of DNA Methylation on Diabetes (Charlotte Ling)
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