题目： Epigenetics in Gene Regulation and Human Diseases

报告人：Kuiming Chan, Ph.D.

Research Assistant Professor

Department of Biochemistry, The University of Hong Kong

时间 : 11月24日(周一) 10 :00-11 :00am

地点 : 金光生命科学大楼411室

联系人 : 李晴 62752516，北京大学生命科学学院, 生命科学联合中心

Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes of gene expression without alteration in DNA sequence. Coordinated control of gene expression is of great importance for growth and development. Typical examples include the epigenetic silencing of developmental regulated genes to maintain cell pluripotency and lineage specificity and X-Chromosome Inactivation (XCI) to ensure equivalent gene dosage of X-linked genes between XY male and XX female. Dysregulation of gene expression often lead to diseases such as the loss of silencing of oncogenes or the epigenetic silencing of tumor suppressor genes, both cases predispose to tumorigenesis. These examples highlight that not only the genetic material; DNA, needs to be accurately replicated during cell division to maintain genome stability, the faithful replication of epigenetic information is also critical for cells to maintain cellular identity and genome integrity. In this talk, I will discuss the work we have done on 1) the search of protein factors in maintaining XCI 2) dissecting how these protein factors impact gene silencing and 3) the role of epigenetics in brain cancer.