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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Nutriepigenetics: The Effects of Diet on Behavior (Monica Dus)
Investigating the Dynamics of Epigenetic Plasticity in Cancer with Single Cell Technologies (Céline Vallot)
Epigenetic Regulation of Stem Cell Self-Renewal and Differentiation (Margaret “Peggy” Goodell)
Genome-Wide Investigation of Epigenetic Marks and Nucleosome Positioning (Keji Zhao)
The Role of lncRNAs in Tumor Growth and Treatment (Sarah Diermeier)
Unraveling Mechanisms of Chromosome Formation (Job Dekker)
Transcription and Polycomb in Inheritance and Disease (Danny Reinberg)
The Epigenetics of COVID-19
Epigenetic Reprogramming During Mammalian Development (Wolf Reik)
In vivo Nucleosome Structure and Dynamics (Srinivas Ramachandran)
Pioneer Transcription Factors and Their Influence on Chromatin Structure (Ken Zaret)
The Role of Small RNAs in Transgenerational Inheritance in C. elegans (Oded Rechavi)
Development of Site-Specific ChIP Technologies (Hodaka Fujii)
Regulation of Chromatin Organization by Histone Chaperones (Geneviève Almouzni)
How the "Fragile Nucleosome" Science Community Came to Life (Christine Cucinotta, Melvin Noe Gonzalez)
Epigenetic Influence on Memory Formation and Inheritance (Isabelle Mansuy)
Influence of Dynamic RNA Methylation on Gene Expression (Chuan He)
How to Publish in Nature: Lessons from the ENCODE Consortium (Michelle Trenkmann, Senior Editor at Nature)
The Role of Non-Histone Proteins in Chromosome Structure and Function During Mitosis (Bill Earnshaw)
Effects of DNA Methylation on Chromatin Structure and Transcription (Dirk Schübeler)
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