Dresden 2020 – wissenschaftliches Programm
Die DPG-Frühjahrstagung in Dresden musste abgesagt werden! Lesen Sie mehr ...
Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Aktualisierungen | Downloads | Hilfe
BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 23: Focus: Physics of Stem Cells
BP 23.7: Vortrag
Mittwoch, 18. März 2020, 12:00–12:30, ZEU 250
Setting up the epigenome: a collective phenomenon — Fabrizio Olmeda1, Stephen Clark2, Tim Lohoff2, Heather Lee3, Wolf Reik2,4, and •Steffen Rulands1,5 — 1Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany — 2The Babraham Institute, Babraham, UK — 3The University of Newcastle, Callaghan NSW, Australia — 4University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK — 5Center for Systems Biology Dresden, Dresden, Germany
During early development, when cells for the first time differentiate into somatic cell types, the genome undergoes large-scale changes in epigenetic DNA modifications (DNA methylation) and chromatin structure. As a result of these processes cells carry distinct epigenetic marks that assign their fate during later stages of development and adulthood. Aberrations in these marks can lead to the death of the embryo and, in adulthood, are one of the hallmarks of cancer. But how are these epigenetic marks so robustly established? Combining novel methods from single-cell multi-genomics with non-equilibrium physics we find universal scaling behaviour in the processes leading to the establishment of epigenetic marks. We show that these phenomena result from long-range interactions mediated by the interplay between chemical and topological modifications of the DNA. Our work sheds new light on epigenetic mechanisms involved in cellular decision making. It also highlights how mechanistic insights into the molecular processes governing cell-fate decisions can be gained by the combination of methods from genomics and non-equilibrium physics.