Dean’s Seminar Series featuring Trevor Archer, PhD – “Epigenetic Enzymes and Glucocorticoid Regulated Transcription”
***CME/CE Credit is being offered***
Speaker:
Trevor Archer, PhD
NIH Distinguished Investigator
Chief, Epigenetics & Stem Cell Biology Laboratory (ESCBL)
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
National Institutes of Health
Title:
“Epigenetic Enzymes and Glucocorticoid Regulated Transcription”
Abstract:
A major reservoir of biological information is stored in the exquisite combination of histone proteins and DNA that we know as chromatin. Understanding how transcription factors find their way to specific loci in chromatin is an outstanding problem in biology, and indeed medicine. In response to hormone, the Glucocorticoid Receptor (GR) interacting with multiple epigenetic enzymes, binds chromatin at individual GR binding sites (GBSs) throughout the genome to modulate the transcriptional response. However, while experiments using bulk populations of cells provide a detailed picture of the global transcriptional hormone response, they are unable to interrogate cell-to-cell transcriptional heterogeneity. Subsequent single cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) experiments reveal a response where only a subset of the total set of GR target genes are active, with a striking cell-to-cell variability in the hormone response. Today’s seminar will present our current efforts toward understanding of the multiple underlying chromatin-based mechanisms and critical modulators responsible for this heterogeneity.