Epigenetics Podcast

In recent years it has become more and more evident, that genome folding and chromatin packaging into the nucleus plays a pivotal role in the regulation of gene expression. In this Episode of our Podcast our host Dr. Stefan Dillinger spoke with Professor Wendy Bickmore about her work on the spatial organization of the human genome. Prof. Bickmore and her team mainly use visual methods like fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) to study the organization of chromosomes in human and murine...

Heterochromatin plays a pivotal role in organizing our genome in the nucleus and separating active from inactive genomic regions. In this Podcast Episode our Guest Gary Karpen from UC Berkeley sits down with our Host Stefan Dillinger to talk about the regulation of this chromatin structure and how DNA repair mechanisms function in this densely packed nuclear compartment. Furthermore, they also discuss how phase separation might be an important part in how heterochromatin domains are...

Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) is a chronic metabolic disease, which is caused by the failure of beta-cells in the pancreas and insulin resistance in peripheral tissue and characterized by high glucose levels in the blood. World-wide 382 Million people suffer from Diabetes which makes up 8,3% of the population. Due to this high proportion it is of high interest to find a cure for this disease. The restoration of β-cell mass and function has therefore become a field of intensive research seeking for...

In the seventh Episode of Active Motif's Epigenetics Podcast our host Dr. Stefan Dillinger sat down with Prof. Edith Heard, designated Director General of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), to talk about the challenges and goals of her new position as Director General of the EMBL. Furthermore, they also talk about her research on X-inactivation and dosage...

In the sixth Episode of Active Motif's Epigenetics Podcast our host Dr. Stefan Dillinger sits down with Prof. Susan Gasser, director of the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, to talk about her research on heterochromatin, its localization in the nucleus and factors that are involved in the anchoring genomic regions at the nuclear periphery. References https://www.fmi.ch/research/groupleader/website/gasserlab/researchtopics.php Histone H3K9 methylation is dispensable for...

In the fifth Episode of the Epigenetics Podcast of Active Motif our host Dr. Stefan Dillinger sits down with Prof. Henk Stunnenberg, full professor and head of the Department of Molecular Biology at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, to talk about his research in Epigenetics and his contributions to the BLUEPRINT and Human Cell Atlas...

The ageing population and challenges that arise from ageing are one of the great scientific challenges of this time. In the fourth Episode of the Epigenetics Podcast from Active Motif, our host Dr. Stefan Dillinger talks with Dr. Peter Tessarz from the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing about his contributions to the field of ageing and also, which epigenetic factors play a role in this process. References for this episode https://www.age.mpg.de/science/research-labs/tessarz/The...

Cancer has become one of the most dangerous diseases of the aging population of industrialized countries. Finding tools to fight cancer is hard, because Cancer presents itself as highly heterogeneous, with over 100 types of cancers described. Not only does Cancer affect aged humans, it has been observed in children in the form of e.g. Medulloblastoma. In the third episode of Active Motif's Epigenetics Podcast, our host Dr. Stefan Dillinger sits down with Dr. David Jones, group leader at the...

The Nucleosome is the basic building unit of chromatin. It consists out of 147 base pairs of double stranded DNA wrapped around the Histone core octamer that consists out of 2 copies of each dimer of H2A/H2B, and H3/H4. Nucleosomes are organized like "beads on a string" to form a modifiable regulatory basis for higher order structures of chromatin. The first images of the nucleosome as a particle was published by our guests Ada and Don Olins from the University of New England in 1974 (Olins,...

Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP) was first developed in Drosophila, where interactions of RNA Pol II with genes were investigated (Mol. Cell. Biol. August 1985 vol. 5 no. 8 2009-2018). Then, in a 1993 publication, (Genes & Dev. 1993 7:592-604), the group of James Broach described the association of histone acetylation state with transcriptional gene silencing in yeast. The technique was first used successfully in mammalian cells by Richard Treisman's group, published in 1998 (Cell (1998)...