Chromatin and Epigenetics at the Forefront: Finding Clues among Peaks

Abstract

The symposium brought together some of the most outstanding scientists studying how chromatin structure and epigenetic mechanisms regulate gene function in both development and disease. Junior scientists had the opportunity to interact with experienced researchers by presenting their work and discussing ideas and novel hypotheses. In order to foster interaction and networking, the scientific agenda was balanced with an extended social agenda. This meeting review describes several of the most provocative and exciting talks from the symposium, revealing how fast this research field is evolving and the profound impact it will have on human health. The Canadian town of Whistler, famous as the largest ski resort in North America, held some of the sport events of the XXI Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games during 2010. This year, the so-called Athletes' Village hosted scientists who attended and participated in the Keystone Symposium on Chromatin and Epigenetics, which turned Whistler into a scientists' village for 5 days. The meeting's 320 participants included a large proportion of young scientists, with nearly 50% at the predoctoral or postdoctoral stage of their careers. Moreover, while a large proportion of participants (70%) had academic affiliations, the industrial sector was also well represented (with 12% of total affiliations), revealing the increasing interest of the sector in the epigenetics field.The most relevant topics covered by this meeting are summarized in Fig. 1 with the relative levels of usage of keywords related to the chromatin and epigenetic research fields. Although cancer was the cellular dysfunction that occupied the greatest proportion of the meeting's interest, the impact of epigenetic research has extended to other functions, such as cellular differentiation and pluripotency, aging, and cellular memory. The ten-eleven translocation (Tet) enzymes were the most-studied protein family, although methyltransferases (MTs), in particular, the Polycomb group (PcG) of protein complexes, the mixed lineage leukemia (MLL) proteins, and the DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs), were in close proximity. DNA methylation seems still to be the most-studied epigenetic modification, although research findings concerning novel functions related to RNA modification were presented during the meeting. Recent advances in chromosome conformation capturing technologies (3C and 4C), together with clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)-Cas9 genome editing, provided new exciting insight into the functionality of regulatory elements, such as promoters and enhancers. Finally, novel methods for molecular analysis of chromatin were presented which will probably soon be part of the preferred techniques in the epigenetics research field, together with chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) and massive parallel sequencing of the transcriptome (RNA-seq).In this review, we highlight several of the most relevant findings presented during the meeting concerning the most discussed topics related to (i) the f...

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