Abstract: In vertebrate genomes most CpG dinucleotides are methylated on the 5 position of cytosine and this epigenetically maintained DNA modification contributes to transcriptional repression. An exception to this generally pervasive methylation in normal tissues are short contiguous stretches of DNA that have a high CpG content, called CpG islands (CGIs), which are refractory to DNA methylation and found associated with up to 70% gene promoters. CGIs are specifically recognized by a class of ZF-CxxC DNA binding domain-containing chromatin modifying enzymes that interpret the non-methylated CpG signal and translate this into a unique chromatin environment at CGI elements. Here I will explore the mechanisms by which CpG island elements create chromatin modification states that regulate gene expression.

Biography: Rob is a Canadian who did his PhD studies at the University of Edinburgh working with Prof. Sir Adrian Bird studying DNA methylation. He carried out his Post-doctoral work with Prof. Yi Zhang at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the US where he helped to discover a new family of histone lysine demethylases. Since 2008 he has been a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow and from 2014 the Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, where his group is focussed on discovering how CpG islands control vertebrate gene regulation.