Alexander Meissner to speak at 2nd Epigenetics Drug Discovery conference May 30-31, 2012 Boston, MA
Alexander Meissner, Assistant Professor at Harvard University will give a keynote presentation on "DNA Methylation Dynamics in Development and Stem Cells" at the 2nd Epigenetics in Drug Discovery Conference taking place on May 30-31, 2012 in Boston, MA.
- (1888PressRelease) March 26, 2012 - Alexander Meissner, Assistant Professor at Harvard University will give a keynote presentation on "DNA Methylation Dynamics in Development and Stem Cells" at the 2nd Epigenetics in Drug Discovery Conference taking place on May 30-31, 2012 in Boston, MA.
Cytosine methylation in mammals is an epigenetic modification that is largely restricted to CpG dinucleotides and serves multiple critical functions including stable repression of target promoters, maintaining genomic integrity, establishing parent-specific imprinting patterns, and silencing endogenous retrotransposon activity. In somatic tissues, CpG methylation exhibits global patterns based on relative CpG density: it is unmethylated in localized CpG islands at housekeeping or developmental promoters, and hypermethylated at non-regulatory CpGs distributed elsewhere in the genome. This landscape is relatively static across all somatic tissues that have been examined to date on a genome scale, where the majority of methylated CpGs are pre-established and inherited through cell divisions.
Generally, only a small fraction of CpGs switch their methylation levels as part of an orchestrated regulatory event. By contrast, DNA methylation is much more dynamic during mouse germ-cell and pre-implantation development. Alex Meissner's presentation will provide recent insights gained through genome-scale mapping of DNA methylation in human pluripotent stem cells and murine development.
GTC's 2nd Epigenetics in Drug Discovery conference is the only epigenetics conference that brings together a balanced mix of leading experts from the industry and academia to collaborate on the latest cutting edge research on novel mechanisms, therapeutics, technologies and diagnostics for epigenetics drug discovery. Some key discussions around epigenetics drug discovery at the conference include the role of epigenetics in human diseases such as cancer, leukaemia, neurodegenerative conditions, neuropsychiatric disorders, inflammation, etc., and cutting edge research from GlaxoSmithKline, Epizyme, Genentech, Constellation, Cellzome, RaNA Therapeutics, Pfizer, Harvard, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
###
space
space
Satisfied Users & 
Approved Press Releases
Print
Email
Report Spam