Abstract
The eukaryotic genome folds in a hierarchy of highly organized 3D structures, including nucleosomes, chromatin fibers, loops, chromatin nanodomains, topologically associating domains (TADs), compartments and chromosome territories. These dynamic structures allow for stable memory as well as for regulatory plasticity, depending on intrinsic cues (such as chromatin association of Polycomb proteins, CTCF and cohesion) and environmental cues.
In this webinar, you will learn about:
- How TADs and chromatin loops can assist gene regulation, both in Drosophila and in mouse cells.
- The use of Micro-C to map ultra-high-resolution genome architecture illuminating the multitude of specific chromatin contacts (architectural, activating and repressing in function).
- Polycomb group proteins’ ability to induce the formation of chromatin loops.
- How the disruption of Polycomb dependent loops reduces silencing of a target genes, suggesting that loops may play instructive roles in gene regulation.
- The surprising finding that Polycomb components are also involved in chromatin loops linked with transcriptional activation.
- Chromatin organization’s ability to induce stable epigenetic memory that is inherited through cell division and across organismal generations.
Speaker: Dr. Giacomo Cavalli
Principal investigator at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Giacomo Cavalli studied Biology at the University of Parma. In 1991, he moved to Zürich at the University of Science and Technology (ETH) to do his PhD, where he worked on chromatin structure and function in yeast with Fritz Thoma and Theo Koller. In 1995, he started a postdoc in the laboratory of Prof. Renato Paro at the University of Heidelberg. In 1999, he moved to IGH in Montpellier, France, to set up a junior lab and stayed at IGH ever since. Giacomo Cavalli made seminal contributions in the field of epigenetics. Using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, he discovered that epigenetic inheritance of new phenotypes can occur independently on changes of the DNA sequence. His lab also discovered that the three-dimensional organization of chromosomes in the cell nucleus is a heritable trait that plays an important gene regulatory role. The Cavalli lab identified 3D structural chromosomal domains dubbed Topologically Associating Domains or TADs. Finally, the Cavalli lab has shown that PcG proteins have tumor suppression activity in flies. Giacomo Cavalli has published more than 130 papers, cited over 19,000 times and many of which in top journals. He received numerous awards and distinctions, including an EMBO membership, the CNRS silver medal, the Allianz Foundation price, the Grand Prix 2020 of the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale and two advanced ERC grants. He has been elected member of the French Academy of Sciences in 2022. He was director of the IGH Genome Dynamics department from 2007 to 2010 and IGH director from 2011 to 2014. He was and is organizer of major international conferences and is appointed as members of several distinguished Institute- and Journal editorial boards.
