Professor David Tremethick, ANU : "What do reproduction and memory have in common? The epigenetic regulator H2A.B"
Speaker:
Professor David Tremethick
Head of the Department of Genome Science, The John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University, Acton, ACT 2601
Title: "What do reproduction and memory have in common? The epigenetic regulator H2A.B"
Abstract:
It is now clearly established that the central regulator of eukaryotic gene expression is the organization of the genome into chromatin. Chromatin performs this crucial function by partitioning the genome into domains that are either open and transcriptionally active or closed and repressed. Chromatin is built from nucleosomes (histones plus DNA), the universal repeating protein-DNA complex in all eukaryotic cells. Nucleosome function is dependent upon the composition of the underlying nucleosome. The key way the biochemical composition of the nucleosome is altered is by the substitution of one or more of the core histones with the corresponding histone variant. Previously, we discovered a new histone variant, H2A.B that displays a unique tissue expression pattern i.e. it is expressed in the testis and the brain. In order to gain mechanistic insights into the role of H2A.B.3 in these different tissues, we took a proteomic approach to identify proteins that specifically interact with H2A.B-containing nucleosomes, analysed its pattern of organisation and expression, uncovered its genomic locations and its relationship with other epigenetic marks, analysed an unexpected interaction with RNA both in vivo and in vitro and most recently, generated a H2A.B mouse knockout. Taken together, our data thus far allows us to propose that H2A.B participates in a novel gene activation and pre-mRNA splicing mechanism that operates uniquely in the testis and brain.
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