Genomic imprinting and the epigenetic control of developmental processes

许多严重的疾病，包括2型糖尿病和癌症，都是由我们的基因组成（我们的DNA）和环境影响共同引起的。我们相信我们的DNA会直接受到它所处环境的影响。有时环境的影响是细胞正常变化的一部分。特别是，我们研究环境如何影响DNA在细胞内如何被包装成染色体。DNA包装的过程不是偶然的，而是高度调控的，在年轻细胞和老年细胞、脑细胞和肌肉细胞之间是不同的。了解环境如何向细胞发出信号并导致它们变得异常是一个很难解决的问题。一种方法是研究一个系统，在这个系统中，细胞通常必须对环境做出反应并改变它们的行为。研究干细胞是一个很好的方法，干细胞在发育成大脑、脂肪或肌肉等身体部位的正常过程中发生变化。这些发育中的细胞是很好的模型因为这些类型的细胞可能在癌症中出错所以研究它们在正常发育中的结果可以与它们表现异常时的结果进行比较。在这里，我们将研究在干细胞发育过程中DNA和将其包装成染色体的调控过程之间的关系。我们将学习这如何影响由DNA编码的基因的行为以及这些基因在不同的细胞类型和不同的环境中会发生什么。

A large number of serious diseases, including type2 diabetes and cancer, are caused by a combination of our genetic make-up (our DNA) and environmental influences. We believe that our DNA can be directly influenced by the environment in which it finds itself. Sometimes the effect of the environment is part of normal change that a cell goes through. In particular we study how the environment influences how DNA is normally packaged into chromosome inside the cell. This process of DNA packaging is not haphazard but highly regulated and is different between young cells and old cells, brain cells and muscle cells. Understanding how the environment signals to cells and causes them to become abnormal is a difficult problem to address. One way to do this is to study a system where cells normally have to respond to their environment and change their behavior. A good system to investigate in this is through the study of cells known as stem cells, that are changing in the normal process of developing into body parts such as the brain, fat or muscles. These developing cells are good models because these are the types of cells that can go wrong in cancer so results generated from studying them in normal development can be compared with results generated when they are behaving abnormally. Here we will study the relationship between the DNA and the regulatory processes that package it into chromosomes while stem cells are developing. We will learn how this affects the behavior of genes encoded by the DNA and what happens to these genes in different cell types and in different environments.