Epigenetics Podcast5 Nov 2020

Pioneer Transcription Factors and Their Influence on Chromatin Structure (Ken Zaret)

In this episode of the Epigenetics Podcast, we caught up with Dr. Ken Zaret, Professor in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, to talk about his work on pioneer transcription factors and their influence on chromatin structure.

Embryonic development is a complex process that needs to be tightly regulated. Multiple regulatory factors contribute to proper development, including a family of specialized regulatory proteins called "pioneer factors." Our guest Dr. Ken Zaret found that these pioneer factors are among the first proteins to bind to chromatin during development and that they can prime important regulatory genes for activation at a later developmental stage. Furthermore, he and his team showed that there might be a "pre-pattern" that exists in cells that determines their developmental fate.

Pioneer factors are not only important in embryonic development, they can also help restart transcription after mitosis. Dr. Zaret and his colleagues demonstrated that FoxA stays bound to chromosomes during mitosis, leading to a rapid reactivation of essential genes at the exit of mitosis.

In this interview, we discuss the story behind how Dr. Zaret discovered pioneer transcription factors like FoxA, how these factors are influenced by the chromatin environment, and how they function.

References

R. Gualdi, P. Bossard, … K. S. Zaret (1996) Hepatic specification of the gut endoderm in vitro: cell signaling and transcriptional control (Genes & Development) DOI: 10.1101/gad.10.13.1670
L. A. Cirillo, C. E. McPherson, … K. S. Zaret (1998) Binding of the winged-helix transcription factor HNF3 to a linker histone site on the nucleosome (The EMBO journal) DOI: 10.1093/emboj/17.1.244
Lisa Ann Cirillo, Frank Robert Lin, … Kenneth S. Zaret (2002) Opening of compacted chromatin by early developmental transcription factors HNF3 (FoxA) and GATA-4 (Molecular Cell) DOI: 10.1016/s1097-2765(02)00459-8
Kenneth S. Zaret (2020) Pioneer Transcription Factors Initiating Gene Network Changes (Annual Review of Genetics) DOI: 10.1146/annurev-genet-030220-015007

Contact

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(179)

Antibodies, Automation, and the Fight for Reproducibility (Alon Goren)

In this episode we speak with Alon Goren from UC San Diego about his work at the intersection of genomic technology development and chromatin biology. We discuss how his lab studies how the epigenome ...

16 Jul 52min

Long-Term Maintenance of Neuronal Identity (Tomohisa Toda)

In this episode of the Epigenetics Podcast, we talked with Tomohisa Toda from the Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin about his work on the long-term maintenance of neuronal identity, with a foc...

2 Jul 38min

Enhancer RNAs: Discovery and Function (Tae-Kyung Kim)

In this episode of the Epigenetics Podcast, we talked with Tae-Kyung Kim from POSTECH in South Korea about the discovery and characterisation of enhancer RNAs. Dr. Kim describes joining Danny Reinbe...

18 Jun 43min

Peter Becker: A Career in Chromatin — From ISWI to Dosage Compensation

In this episode of the Epigenetics Podcast, we talked with Peter Becker from the Biomedical Center Munich about his successful career in Epigenetics, where he discovered the chromatin remodeler ISWI ...

4 Jun 1h 4min

Transcriptional and Epigenetic Regulation of Craniofacial Development (Filippo Rijli)

In this episode of the Epigenetics Podcast, we talked with Filippo Rijli from the Friedrich Miescher Institute about his work on transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of craniofacial and neuronal ...

21 Mai 51min

Epigenetic Signatures During Aging and Cancer (Alena van Bömmel)

In this episode of the Epigenetics Podcast, we talked with Alena van Bömmel from the Biomedical Center (BMC) in Munich about her work on the development of interpretable epigenetic clocks and statisti...

7 Mai 37min

Heterochromatin Formation by the HUSH complex (Iva Tchasovnikarova)

In this episode of the Epigenetics Podcast, we talked with Iva Tchasovnikarova from the Wellcome Trust Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute about her work on heterochromatin formation and epigenetic co...

23 Apr 41min

Cryo-EM and the Dynamics of TFIID and PRC2 (Eva Nogales)

In this episode of the Epigenetics Podcast, we talked with Eva Nogales from UC Berkeley about her work on Cryo-EM and the Dynamics of TFIID and PRC2. We explore the origins of Dr. Nogales's fascinat...

9 Apr 51min