The Muscle Cellular and Molecular Physiology Research Group and Institute of Sport and Physical Activity Research cordially invite you to an evening (Monday 19 November 2012) for the public understanding of science with Professor Randy L. Jirtle. His lecture is entitled “Epigenetics: How Genes and Environment Interact”
Professor Randy L. Jirtle headed the epigenetics and imprinting laboratory at Duke University in Durham, NC until 2012. He is now a Visiting Professor at McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research in the Department of Oncology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, WI. Jirtle’s research interests are in epigenetics, genomic imprinting, and the fetal origins of disease susceptibility. He has published over 180 peer-reviewed articles, and was a featured scientist on the NOVA television program on epigenetics entitled Ghost in Your Genes. He was invited to speak at the 2004 Nobel Symposium on Epigenetics. He was honored in 2006 with the Distinguished Achievement Award from the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2007, Jirtle received an Esther B. O’Keeffe Charitable Foundation Award and was nominated for Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.” He was the inaugural recipient of the Epigenetic Medicine Award in 2008, and received the STARS Lecture Award in Nutrition and Cancer from the National Cancer Institute in 2009. Jirtle was invited in 2010 to participate in the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado, and the Nestlé’s 7th International Nutrition Symposium in Switzerland. Jirtle organized the Keystone Environmental Epigenomics and Disease Susceptibility meeting, received the EHP Classic Paper of the Year Award, and was invited to speak again in the Nobel Forum at a clinical epigenomics symposium sponsored by The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm in 2011. Dr. Jirtle was invited this year to present the NIH Director’s WALS lecture.
Monday 19 November 2012 Evening Programme 18:00-19:30 in the Performance Theatre (D1.02), Polhill Avenue, Bedford, Bedfordshire, United Kingdom Directions
To register for this free event follow this link http://uob.cc/genes
Evening program
Dr William M. Brown introductory remarks 18:05-18:10
Professor Randy L. Jirtle’s “Epigenetics: How Genes and Environment Interact” 18:10
Summary: Human epidemiological and animal experimental data indicate that the risk of developing adult onset diseases and neurological disorders is influenced by persistent adaptations to prenatal and early postnatal environmental exposures. One group of epigenetically regulated genes that potentially links environmental exposures early in development to adult diseases are those with metastable epialleles. These genes have highly variable expression because of stochastic allelic changes in the epigenome rather than mutations in the genome. The viable yellow agouti (Avy) mouse harbors a metastable Agouti gene because of an upstream insertion of a transposable element. We have used the Avy mouse to investigate the importance of epigenetic alterations in determining adult disease risk in response to early developmental exposure to both chemical and physical agents. The importance of these studies with regards to human health and disease will be discussed.
Questions from audience and closing remarks 19:00-19:30
Sociogenomics Blog 