Conference Overview

Epigenetics refers to heritable change in gene expression that does not involve changes to the underlying DNA sequence. At least three systems including DNA methylation, histone modifications and non-coding RNAs (ncRNA) are considered to play fundamental roles in epigenetic regulation. Research over the last two decades has uncovered the role of epigenetics in a variety of human disorders and fatal diseases. Moreover influence of age, environment, lifestyle, and disease state on epigenetic states is being increasingly appreciated and actively studied.

This conference provides an international forum for cutting edge research in chromatin and epigenetics. It provides the “focal hub” for people to present their research and exchange ideas in a European venue. Renowned speakers will cover the latest advances in the field, including chromatin regulation, chromatin dynamics, signalling to chromatin, nuclear architecture and dynamics, developmental epigenetics, epigenomics, epigenetics and human diseases, genome stability, environmental epigenetics, and transgenerational inheritance.

Session Topics

• Epigenetic reprogramming
• Developmental epigenetics
• Different states of chromatin
• Histone modifications, RNA and metabolism
• Transcriptional and posttranscriptional regulation
• Nuclear architecture
• Chromatin and its variants in disease

Speakers:

Asifa Akhtar
Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, Germany

Geneviève Almouzni
Institut Curie, France

Wendy Bickmore
The University of Edinburgh, UK

Andrea Brand
The Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, UK

Howard Y. Chang
Stanford University, USA

L. Stirling Churchman
Harvard Medical School, USA

Ibrahim Cissé
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

Xavier Darzacq
University of California, Berkeley, USA

Caroline Dean
John Innes Centre, UK

Joseph R. Ecker
HHMI & The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, USA

Emma Farley
University of California, San Diego, USA

Anne Ferguson-Smith
University of Cambridge, UK

Polly Fordyce
Stanford University, USA

Eileen Furlong
EMBL Heidelberg, Germany

Edith Heard
EMBL Heidelberg, Germany

Steven Henikoff
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, USA

Gary H. Karpen
UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, USA

Jean-Christophe Marine
VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology, Belgium

Ana Pombo
Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Germany

Chris Ponting
The University of Edinburgh, UK

Wolf Reik
Babraham Institute, UK

Amos Tanay
Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel

Igor Ulitsky
Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel

Fred Winston
Harvard Medical School, USA