Promoter-associated histone modifications and establishment of the developmental gene expression programme during early embryogenesis
Lead Research Organisation:
Imperial College London
Department Name: Institute of Clinical Sciences
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Technical Summary
BACKGROUND - Understanding the mechanisms of epigenetic regulation and their phenotypic consequences in development is a key prerequisite to unravelling the disease-causing mechanisms involving epigenetic change. The mechanisms of epigenetic signals (DNA methylation, histone posttranslational modifications (PTM) and RNAs) in the maintenance and reprogramming of cell fates remains elusive. Premarking of histones on promoters is present at early ontogenic stages and in sperm, suggesting predictive roles in establishment of a developmental gene expression.
OBJECTIVES - We address histone modifications in transcription regulation during earliest stages of embryo development. We shall exploit the transcription-free stages of zebrafish development to study the temporal regulation of chromatin modifications from gametes to transcriptionally active embryo and ask: 1. Does the pattern of PTMs in gametes predict pattern of chromatin modifications. 2. Can parent-specific histone PTMs be traced in the developing vertebrate embryo and do parental PTM patterns impact developmental gene expression? 3. What sequence information (CpG content) is required for the deposition of H3K4me3 and transcription start site choice?
METHODS - We will use small cell number ChIP and RNA sequencing in embryos and gametes, and apply our recent advances in deciphering core promoter codes to decipher the signals associated with deposition of the transcription initiation machinery, histone PTMs and nucleosome positioning signals by genome-scale analysis.
EXPECTED OUTCOME - This work will shed light on the relationship between chromatin regulation and transcription initiation at zygotic genome activation of the vertebrate embryo. It will elucidate the contribution of histone PTMs to developmental program of gene expression for normal ontogeny of a complex organism and provide critical evidence and a resource to study transgenerational epigenetic inheritance in a tractable vertebrate model.
OBJECTIVES - We address histone modifications in transcription regulation during earliest stages of embryo development. We shall exploit the transcription-free stages of zebrafish development to study the temporal regulation of chromatin modifications from gametes to transcriptionally active embryo and ask: 1. Does the pattern of PTMs in gametes predict pattern of chromatin modifications. 2. Can parent-specific histone PTMs be traced in the developing vertebrate embryo and do parental PTM patterns impact developmental gene expression? 3. What sequence information (CpG content) is required for the deposition of H3K4me3 and transcription start site choice?
METHODS - We will use small cell number ChIP and RNA sequencing in embryos and gametes, and apply our recent advances in deciphering core promoter codes to decipher the signals associated with deposition of the transcription initiation machinery, histone PTMs and nucleosome positioning signals by genome-scale analysis.
EXPECTED OUTCOME - This work will shed light on the relationship between chromatin regulation and transcription initiation at zygotic genome activation of the vertebrate embryo. It will elucidate the contribution of histone PTMs to developmental program of gene expression for normal ontogeny of a complex organism and provide critical evidence and a resource to study transgenerational epigenetic inheritance in a tractable vertebrate model.
Planned Impact
The projects will have a large academic impact, described in detail in "Academic beneficiaries". It is perfectly aligned with the BBSRC strategic priority "Data Driven Biology" - it includes analysis and interrogation of next-generation sequencing datasets, analysis of the impact of genome variation, the extraction of quantitative information, and the development of new visualisation approaches for answering biological questions. Even though it addresses a fundamental scientific problem, the results and the methodologies developed within the project have the potential for a broader impact:
IMPACT ON HEALTH - The research focuses on the understanding of fundamental processes during early development, including the mechanism of activation of developmental programmes and the genes that control it, often associated with genetic and multifactorial disease. Understanding their early activation will have impact on understanding their function and the generation of hypotheses about the mechanism of disease. The events during the transition from gametes to dividing embryo and its activation will characterise key epigenetic events following fertilisation and provide a wealth of data that can be exploited for studies of stem cell biology, and transgenerational epigenetic inheritance and their applications.
IMPACT OF NEW METHODOLOGIES IN DEVELOPMENTAL GENOMICS - The experimental protocols we plan to develop for enabling genome-wide studies on limited amount of material will have impact on future efforts with cell type specific epigenomics. Applications will include include human (patient) samples, other animal model organism, and commercial species.
IMPACT OF THE GENERATED DATA AND SOFTWARE TOOLS - To maximise the impact of genome-wide datasets produced in the course of the project, it is necessary to provide them in an easily accessible and documented way. The combination of the data and tools to manipulate them is expected to have additional impact beyond the areas directly addressed by the project itself.
IMPACT ON THE EXPERTISE IN COMPUTATIONAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY - The expertise in computational genomics and epigenomics in particular, is currently in high demand that vastly exceeds the supply of qualified, talented people. Training postdoctoral researchers in an interdisciplinary setting by collaborating groups with strong track record in computational genomics and developmental genetics bridges the training gap between computational and wet lab and has a potential to produce future research leaders. The computational methods developed on the project will benefit the community by increasing productivity through reusing and extending the softwares created here.
GENERAL IMPACT ON THE UK SCIENCE - University of Birmingham and Imperial College London are currently expanding their activities to become world leaders in the areas of genomics, integrative and systems biology. The competitive research program that we propose here will represent a large step towards that goal. Our training activities will provide exposure to our research and skills to talented students in developmental and computational biology across Europe, and serve as a platform for their recruitment to the UK.
IMPACT ON GENERAL PUBLIC AND APPRECIATION OF SCIENCE - Our outreach activities will span the audiences from general public to students. Within general public, we will organise activities that cover age groups from primary school pupils to adults. In addition to conveying the importance of our research, we shall address topics such as why zebrafish is a good organism to study human biology and disease, how whole genomes are studied, how biologists struggle with vast amounts of data etc. We expect this to benefit both the general public and the scientific community by increasing public appreciation of science and scientists, and by early exposure to current research.
The details of implementation are provided in "Pathways to Impact".
IMPACT ON HEALTH - The research focuses on the understanding of fundamental processes during early development, including the mechanism of activation of developmental programmes and the genes that control it, often associated with genetic and multifactorial disease. Understanding their early activation will have impact on understanding their function and the generation of hypotheses about the mechanism of disease. The events during the transition from gametes to dividing embryo and its activation will characterise key epigenetic events following fertilisation and provide a wealth of data that can be exploited for studies of stem cell biology, and transgenerational epigenetic inheritance and their applications.
IMPACT OF NEW METHODOLOGIES IN DEVELOPMENTAL GENOMICS - The experimental protocols we plan to develop for enabling genome-wide studies on limited amount of material will have impact on future efforts with cell type specific epigenomics. Applications will include include human (patient) samples, other animal model organism, and commercial species.
IMPACT OF THE GENERATED DATA AND SOFTWARE TOOLS - To maximise the impact of genome-wide datasets produced in the course of the project, it is necessary to provide them in an easily accessible and documented way. The combination of the data and tools to manipulate them is expected to have additional impact beyond the areas directly addressed by the project itself.
IMPACT ON THE EXPERTISE IN COMPUTATIONAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY - The expertise in computational genomics and epigenomics in particular, is currently in high demand that vastly exceeds the supply of qualified, talented people. Training postdoctoral researchers in an interdisciplinary setting by collaborating groups with strong track record in computational genomics and developmental genetics bridges the training gap between computational and wet lab and has a potential to produce future research leaders. The computational methods developed on the project will benefit the community by increasing productivity through reusing and extending the softwares created here.
GENERAL IMPACT ON THE UK SCIENCE - University of Birmingham and Imperial College London are currently expanding their activities to become world leaders in the areas of genomics, integrative and systems biology. The competitive research program that we propose here will represent a large step towards that goal. Our training activities will provide exposure to our research and skills to talented students in developmental and computational biology across Europe, and serve as a platform for their recruitment to the UK.
IMPACT ON GENERAL PUBLIC AND APPRECIATION OF SCIENCE - Our outreach activities will span the audiences from general public to students. Within general public, we will organise activities that cover age groups from primary school pupils to adults. In addition to conveying the importance of our research, we shall address topics such as why zebrafish is a good organism to study human biology and disease, how whole genomes are studied, how biologists struggle with vast amounts of data etc. We expect this to benefit both the general public and the scientific community by increasing public appreciation of science and scientists, and by early exposure to current research.
The details of implementation are provided in "Pathways to Impact".
People |
ORCID iD |
Boris Lenhard (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Baranasic D
(2022)
Multiomic atlas with functional stratification and developmental dynamics of zebrafish cis-regulatory elements.
in Nature genetics
Castro-Mondragon J
(2022)
JASPAR 2022: the 9th release of the open-access database of transcription factor binding profiles
in Nucleic Acids Research
Cvetesic N
(2017)
Core promoters across the genome.
in Nature biotechnology
D'Orazio FM
(2021)
Germ cell differentiation requires Tdrd7-dependent chromatin and transcriptome reprogramming marked by germ plasm relocalization.
in Developmental cell
Danks GB
(2018)
Distinct core promoter codes drive transcription initiation at key developmental transitions in a marine chordate.
in BMC genomics
Haberle V
(2016)
Promoter architectures and developmental gene regulation
in Seminars in Cell & Developmental Biology
Khan A
(2018)
JASPAR 2018: update of the open-access database of transcription factor binding profiles and its web framework.
in Nucleic acids research
Khan A
(2018)
JASPAR 2018: update of the open-access database of transcription factor binding profiles and its web framework.
in Nucleic acids research
Kolder IC
(2016)
A full-body transcriptome and proteome resource for the European common carp.
in BMC genomics
Description | We have produced and analysed first batches of small cell number immunoprecipitation (ChIP) data. We have reanalysed previously published ChIP data for zebrafish sperm and embryo stages, and began the development of computational methods for their integration with the incoming experimental data of this project. In the second year of the project, we produced and analysed nuclear CAGE (=transcription start site usage), ATAC-seq and H3K27me3 data in earliest stages of the zebrafish blastula, rev |
Exploitation Route | The results will be useful for researchers using zebrafish as a model organism, and the insights from them will, through comparative genomics and epigenomics approaches, be transferrable to other vertebrate organisms, including human. |
Sectors | Healthcare Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology |
Description | I have presented some of the results of the project to several hundred secondary school students: http://esss.wp.eursc.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/Booklet-ESSS2018.pdf |
First Year Of Impact | 2018 |
Sector | Education |
Impact Types | Societal |
Title | DANIO-CODE DCC (Data Coordination Centre) |
Description | DANIO-CODE is an international collaborative effort that aims to annotate the functional elements of the zebrafish genome. DanioPeaks is a key contributor to this effort. The DCC aims to collect, process and serve to users all available high-throughput sequencing experimental datasets for zebrafish, and to provide data standards and infrastructure for the upload and processing of future data. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2017 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | When released, DANIO-CODE DCC is envisioned to be the main repository of uniformly processed zebrafish transcriptomic, regulatory and epigenetic experimental data based on high-throughput sequencing. |
URL | https://danio-code.zfin.org |
Description | FANTOM6 |
Organisation | RIKEN |
Department | Division of Genomic Technologies |
Country | Japan |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
PI Contribution | We have been members of FANTOM consortia since FANTOM2. Our task has been to analyse the data produced by RIKEN and experimental collaborators of the consortium. |
Collaborator Contribution | The focus of FANTOM6 is massively parallel functional analysis of long noncoding RNAs. In the pilot phase, the RIKEN Division of Genomic Technologies has produced expression data (CAGE and RNA-seq) for the knockdown of a large number of lncRNAs in one human cell type. Main part of the project will expand to multiple cell types and include CRISPR/Cas9 knockouts of lncRNA in addition to shRNA knockdowns. |
Impact | There are no outcomes yet - the collaboration is still in the early stage. It is an interdisciplinary collaboration between - genomic technology development (RIKEN) - experimental molecular biology - computational biology. |
Start Year | 2015 |
Description | ZENCODE-ITN |
Organisation | Karolinska Institute |
Department | Department of Biosciences and Nutrition |
Country | Sweden |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | ZENCODE-ITN is a Marie Curie initial training programme funded by the European Union under the H020 programme. The ZENCODE Initial Training Network aims to improve career perspectives of early-stage researchers (ESR) in both public and private sectors, thereby making research careers more attractive to young people. The scientific focus of the ZENCODE-ITN consortium is to understand genome regulation through combined experimental and computational approaches in a model vertebrate. The consortium recognises the urgent need for highly skilled young scientists trained in both computational biology and experimental wet lab biology. This network provides multi-disciplinary skills for a solid foundation in computational biology and developmental genomics. |
Collaborator Contribution | ZENCODE-ITN as a whole aims to comprehensively annotate functional epigenetic and transcribed elements, decipher genomic codes of transcription, as well as coding and non-coding gene function during vertebrate development and enhance zebrafish as an attractive developmental, comparative genomic and disease model. The participants include major zebrafish genomics laboratories, eminent computational biologists and world-class genomics technology experts. The training program is designed for 15 ESRs, with more than 40 intersectoral and interdisciplinary secondments available, 7 training courses and 2 workshops/conferences. Through a trans-national network of public and private partners we aim to enhance the employability of the recruited ESRs through exposure to both academia and enterprise, thus extending the traditional academic research training setting and eliminating cultural and other barriers to mobility. The full list of partners is available at https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/generic/zencode-itn/partners/index.aspx |
Impact | As part of ZENCODE-ITN had direct collaborations with the laboratories of Ferenc Mueller (University of Birmingham), Juan M. Vaquerizas (Max Planck Institute, Münster, Germany), Carsten Daub (Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden), Bernard Peers (University of Liege, Belgium) and Piero Carninci (RIKEN, Yokohama, Japan). It was a collaboration of computational biology research groups and experimental groups that use zebrafish as a model system. We have published jointly authored papers with all of them. |
Start Year | 2015 |
Description | ZENCODE-ITN |
Organisation | Max Planck Society |
Department | Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine |
Country | Germany |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | ZENCODE-ITN is a Marie Curie initial training programme funded by the European Union under the H020 programme. The ZENCODE Initial Training Network aims to improve career perspectives of early-stage researchers (ESR) in both public and private sectors, thereby making research careers more attractive to young people. The scientific focus of the ZENCODE-ITN consortium is to understand genome regulation through combined experimental and computational approaches in a model vertebrate. The consortium recognises the urgent need for highly skilled young scientists trained in both computational biology and experimental wet lab biology. This network provides multi-disciplinary skills for a solid foundation in computational biology and developmental genomics. |
Collaborator Contribution | ZENCODE-ITN as a whole aims to comprehensively annotate functional epigenetic and transcribed elements, decipher genomic codes of transcription, as well as coding and non-coding gene function during vertebrate development and enhance zebrafish as an attractive developmental, comparative genomic and disease model. The participants include major zebrafish genomics laboratories, eminent computational biologists and world-class genomics technology experts. The training program is designed for 15 ESRs, with more than 40 intersectoral and interdisciplinary secondments available, 7 training courses and 2 workshops/conferences. Through a trans-national network of public and private partners we aim to enhance the employability of the recruited ESRs through exposure to both academia and enterprise, thus extending the traditional academic research training setting and eliminating cultural and other barriers to mobility. The full list of partners is available at https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/generic/zencode-itn/partners/index.aspx |
Impact | As part of ZENCODE-ITN had direct collaborations with the laboratories of Ferenc Mueller (University of Birmingham), Juan M. Vaquerizas (Max Planck Institute, Münster, Germany), Carsten Daub (Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden), Bernard Peers (University of Liege, Belgium) and Piero Carninci (RIKEN, Yokohama, Japan). It was a collaboration of computational biology research groups and experimental groups that use zebrafish as a model system. We have published jointly authored papers with all of them. |
Start Year | 2015 |
Description | ZENCODE-ITN |
Organisation | RIKEN |
Department | Omics Science Center |
Country | Japan |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | ZENCODE-ITN is a Marie Curie initial training programme funded by the European Union under the H020 programme. The ZENCODE Initial Training Network aims to improve career perspectives of early-stage researchers (ESR) in both public and private sectors, thereby making research careers more attractive to young people. The scientific focus of the ZENCODE-ITN consortium is to understand genome regulation through combined experimental and computational approaches in a model vertebrate. The consortium recognises the urgent need for highly skilled young scientists trained in both computational biology and experimental wet lab biology. This network provides multi-disciplinary skills for a solid foundation in computational biology and developmental genomics. |
Collaborator Contribution | ZENCODE-ITN as a whole aims to comprehensively annotate functional epigenetic and transcribed elements, decipher genomic codes of transcription, as well as coding and non-coding gene function during vertebrate development and enhance zebrafish as an attractive developmental, comparative genomic and disease model. The participants include major zebrafish genomics laboratories, eminent computational biologists and world-class genomics technology experts. The training program is designed for 15 ESRs, with more than 40 intersectoral and interdisciplinary secondments available, 7 training courses and 2 workshops/conferences. Through a trans-national network of public and private partners we aim to enhance the employability of the recruited ESRs through exposure to both academia and enterprise, thus extending the traditional academic research training setting and eliminating cultural and other barriers to mobility. The full list of partners is available at https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/generic/zencode-itn/partners/index.aspx |
Impact | As part of ZENCODE-ITN had direct collaborations with the laboratories of Ferenc Mueller (University of Birmingham), Juan M. Vaquerizas (Max Planck Institute, Münster, Germany), Carsten Daub (Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden), Bernard Peers (University of Liege, Belgium) and Piero Carninci (RIKEN, Yokohama, Japan). It was a collaboration of computational biology research groups and experimental groups that use zebrafish as a model system. We have published jointly authored papers with all of them. |
Start Year | 2015 |
Description | ZENCODE-ITN |
Organisation | University of Birmingham |
Department | College of Medical and Dental Sciences |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | ZENCODE-ITN is a Marie Curie initial training programme funded by the European Union under the H020 programme. The ZENCODE Initial Training Network aims to improve career perspectives of early-stage researchers (ESR) in both public and private sectors, thereby making research careers more attractive to young people. The scientific focus of the ZENCODE-ITN consortium is to understand genome regulation through combined experimental and computational approaches in a model vertebrate. The consortium recognises the urgent need for highly skilled young scientists trained in both computational biology and experimental wet lab biology. This network provides multi-disciplinary skills for a solid foundation in computational biology and developmental genomics. |
Collaborator Contribution | ZENCODE-ITN as a whole aims to comprehensively annotate functional epigenetic and transcribed elements, decipher genomic codes of transcription, as well as coding and non-coding gene function during vertebrate development and enhance zebrafish as an attractive developmental, comparative genomic and disease model. The participants include major zebrafish genomics laboratories, eminent computational biologists and world-class genomics technology experts. The training program is designed for 15 ESRs, with more than 40 intersectoral and interdisciplinary secondments available, 7 training courses and 2 workshops/conferences. Through a trans-national network of public and private partners we aim to enhance the employability of the recruited ESRs through exposure to both academia and enterprise, thus extending the traditional academic research training setting and eliminating cultural and other barriers to mobility. The full list of partners is available at https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/generic/zencode-itn/partners/index.aspx |
Impact | As part of ZENCODE-ITN had direct collaborations with the laboratories of Ferenc Mueller (University of Birmingham), Juan M. Vaquerizas (Max Planck Institute, Münster, Germany), Carsten Daub (Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden), Bernard Peers (University of Liege, Belgium) and Piero Carninci (RIKEN, Yokohama, Japan). It was a collaboration of computational biology research groups and experimental groups that use zebrafish as a model system. We have published jointly authored papers with all of them. |
Start Year | 2015 |
Description | ZENCODE-ITN |
Organisation | University of Liege |
Department | Interdisciplinary Cluster for Applied Genoproteomics (GIGA) |
Country | Belgium |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | ZENCODE-ITN is a Marie Curie initial training programme funded by the European Union under the H020 programme. The ZENCODE Initial Training Network aims to improve career perspectives of early-stage researchers (ESR) in both public and private sectors, thereby making research careers more attractive to young people. The scientific focus of the ZENCODE-ITN consortium is to understand genome regulation through combined experimental and computational approaches in a model vertebrate. The consortium recognises the urgent need for highly skilled young scientists trained in both computational biology and experimental wet lab biology. This network provides multi-disciplinary skills for a solid foundation in computational biology and developmental genomics. |
Collaborator Contribution | ZENCODE-ITN as a whole aims to comprehensively annotate functional epigenetic and transcribed elements, decipher genomic codes of transcription, as well as coding and non-coding gene function during vertebrate development and enhance zebrafish as an attractive developmental, comparative genomic and disease model. The participants include major zebrafish genomics laboratories, eminent computational biologists and world-class genomics technology experts. The training program is designed for 15 ESRs, with more than 40 intersectoral and interdisciplinary secondments available, 7 training courses and 2 workshops/conferences. Through a trans-national network of public and private partners we aim to enhance the employability of the recruited ESRs through exposure to both academia and enterprise, thus extending the traditional academic research training setting and eliminating cultural and other barriers to mobility. The full list of partners is available at https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/generic/zencode-itn/partners/index.aspx |
Impact | As part of ZENCODE-ITN had direct collaborations with the laboratories of Ferenc Mueller (University of Birmingham), Juan M. Vaquerizas (Max Planck Institute, Münster, Germany), Carsten Daub (Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden), Bernard Peers (University of Liege, Belgium) and Piero Carninci (RIKEN, Yokohama, Japan). It was a collaboration of computational biology research groups and experimental groups that use zebrafish as a model system. We have published jointly authored papers with all of them. |
Start Year | 2015 |
Title | seqPattern |
Description | seqPattern is a R/Bioconductor package for visualising oligonucleotide patterns and sequence motifs occurrences across a large set of sequences centred at a common reference point and sorted by a user defined feature. |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2015 |
Open Source License? | Yes |
Impact | The software was originally developed for the visualisation of data in this publication: Haberle, V., Li, N., Hadzhiev, Y., Plessy, C., Previti, C., Nepal, C., et al. (2014). Two independent transcription initiation codes overlap on vertebrate core promoters. Nature, 507(7492), 381-385. http://doi.org/10.1038/nature12974 Since then it has been used for several publications that are currently accepted for publication or under review. |
URL | http://bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/html/seqPattern.html |
Description | Participation as a guest speaker at the European Schools' Science Symposium 2018, European School/Ecole Europeene, Luxembourg |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Schools |
Results and Impact | I presented a talk for secondary school students at the science symposium of European schools, and international competition and conference for students of European schools (full list of schools at https://www.eursc.eu/en/European-Schools/locations ). The abstract of the talk was: Fish-and-Chips Science: Studying the secrets of life using small fish and large computers Boris Lenhard Imperial College London Experimental biology studies a variety of model organisms. Many discoveries on model organisms apply to human biology, too. The choice of model is a compromise between its ease of use in the laboratory and its relatedness to humans. Some of the choices include bacteria like E. coli, yeast, frogs, mice, and nonhuman primates. Bacteria and humans share the same genetic code and basic metabolic pathways, so they are good models for studying both. But, if we want to study how an embryo develops into adult, we need to study a multicellular animal - the closer to human the better. Zebrafish is a small fish found in the rivers and lakes of south Asia. It has become a favourite model to study vertebrate embryonic development. Its embryo is transparent and develops outside of the body, so it can be easily manipulated and studied under microscope. It takes only a day to grow from fertilised egg to an enbryo with eyes, brain and muscles. The embryo then takes two months to grow into an adult that can produce next generation of embryos. Comparison of human and zebrafish genomes can tell us which parts of the genome are the most important. These parts include both the genes and the bits that turn genes on and off, and they are under strong evolutionary pressure not to change. I will show how we compare genomes using computer algorithms and computer graphics. This is how we have discovered that thousands of parts of genome are almost identical between human and fish. These parts control when and where genes switch on and off during embryo development. It was a big surprise to us that these control parts were much more similar than the genes themselves. We still do not know how they manage to stay so similar for hundreds of millions of years: it is one of the unsolved mysteries of genome biology. ------- After the talk there were multiple questions from students, teachers, and their guests, followed by the tour of the host school and meeting with its biology teachers. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
URL | http://esss.wp.eursc.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/Booklet-ESSS2018.pdf |