Randy Jirtle
Professor of Epigenetics, Department of Biological Sciences, North Carolina State University
Randy L. Jirtle is a Professor of Epigenetics at the Department of Biological Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, and a Senior Scientist at McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI. He was previously professor of radiation oncology and associate professor of pathology at Duke University, Durham, NC. He graduated with a B.S. degree in nuclear engineering and a Ph.D. degree in radiation biology.
Dr. Jirtle’s research interests are in epigenetics, genomic imprinting, and the fetal origins of disease susceptibility. He identified the first imprinted tumor suppressor gene, IGF2R, and showed that its inactivation increases tumor resistance to radiotherapy. Jirtle discovered a novel imprinted domain at human 14q32, and identified the Callipyge or ‘beautiful buttocks’ locus in the homologous region of sheep. He subsequently traced the mammalian origin of genomic imprinting from monotremes to placental mammals. These studies provided the crucial data that allowed him to complete the first genome-wide mapping of human imprinted genes using a bioinformatic approach. This has resulted in nearly 20% of the known human imprinted genes being identified by the Jirtle laboratory. Jirtle also demonstrated that maternal dietary supplementation of Avy mice during pregnancy, with either methyl donors or genistein, decreases adult disease incidence in the offspring by increasing DNA methylation at the Agouti locus.
Read More (External Link)
Moshe Syzf
Geneticist
Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, McGill University
Szyf received his Ph. D from the Hebrew University and did his postdoctoral fellowship in Genetics at Harvard Medical School, joined the department in 1989 and currently holds a James McGill Professorship and GlaxoSmithKline-CIHR Chair in Pharmacology. He is the founding co-director of the Sackler Institute for Epigenetics and Psychobiology at McGill and is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Experience-based Brain and Biological Development program. Szyf has been the founder of the first “Pharma” to develop epigenetic pharmacology “Methylgene Inc.” and the first journal in epigenetics “Epigenetics”. Szyf lab has proposed two decades ago that DNA methylation is a prime therapeutic target in cancer and other diseases and has postulated and provided the first set of evidence that the “social environment” early in life can alter DNA methylation launching the emerging field of “social epigenetics”.
Read More (External Link)
Shelley Berger
Professor Cell & Developmental Biology
Director, Epigenetics Institute, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Shelley Berger, Ph.D., is the Daniel S. Och University Professor at University of Pennsylvania and a faculty member in the Cell & Developmental Biology Department and the Genetics Department in the Perelman School of Medicine, as well as the Biology Department in the School of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Berger also serves as Director of the Epigenetics Institute at Penn School of Medicine. Dr. Berger earned her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and was a post-doctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. Berger has been a faculty member for more than 20 years. Her laboratory is engaged in studies of chromatin and epigenetic regulation of the eukaryotic genome, focusing on post-translational modifications of histone proteins. Over its history, research in Dr. Berger’s lab has uncovered numerous chromatin enzymes and addressed fundamental questions on their mechanisms in modifying both histones and DNA binding activators in transcription. These findings have contributed to the explosion in broad interest and focus on epigenetics in biomedical research. In recent years her lab’s effort has become increasingly focused on the study of mammalian biology and human diseases, including cancer and other diseases associated with aging, as well as epigenetic control of learning, memory, and behavior in mammals and the ant model system.
Read More (External Link)
Ben Garcia
Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics
Director of Quantitative Proteomics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Benjamin A. Garcia obtained his BS in Chemistry at UC Davis in 2000, where he worked as an undergraduate researcher in Prof. Carlito Lebrilla’s laboratory. He then received his PhD in Chemistry in 2005 at the University of Virginia and was an NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois. From there, Ben was appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Molecular Biology Department at Princeton University, until his recruitment as the Presidential Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in 2012 and was promoted to full Professor in 2016.
The Garcia lab has been developing and applying novel mass spectrometry based proteomic approaches and bioinformatics for interrogating modified proteins and proteomes, especially those involved in epigenetic and chromatin processes.
Dr. Garcia has been recognized with many honors and awards for his quantitative proteomics research including the American Society for Mass Spectrometry Research award, a National Science Foundation Early Faculty CAREER award, an NIH Director’s New Innovator award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, PECASE, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, a Biomed Central Research award in Molecular and Cellular Science, the PITTCON Achievement award, the Protein Society Young Investigator award, the American Chemical Society Arthur F. Findeis award and in 2018 the prestigious ASMS Biemann Medal.
Read More (External Link)
Suzanne King
Professor of Psychiatry, McGill University and Douglas Hospital Research Centre
Suzanne King studies developmental psychopathology, and the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD). In the past, she has used retrospective research with schizophrenia patients and controls. Currently, her work is focused on three prospective longitudinal studies of children who were exposed to maternal stress in utero as the result of a natural disaster: The Quebec ice storm of 1998; Iowa floods of 2008; and Queensland floods in Australia in 2011. Developmental outcomes include cognitive development (incl. IQ, language, memory, attention), physical development (incl. body composition and obesity, metabolism, brain structure, immunity, craniofacial dysmorphology, epigenetics), behavioral development (incl. internalizing, externalizing, autistic- or psychotic-like traits) and motor development (incl. balance, coordination, fine motor, visual motor integration).
Read More (External Link)
Cathrine Hoyo
Epidemiologist
Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, North Carolina State University
Dr. Hoyo is an epidemiologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University, and co-leader of the Integrative Health Science Facility Core in the Center for Human Health and the Environment. A native of Zimbabwe, She earned her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Sierra Leone, Njala College, a Master’s degree from UC Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her postdoctoral fellowship was at UNC Lilongwe, Malawi. After her first faculty appointment at North Carolina Central University, she joined the faculty at Duke University, School of Medicine, in the Departments of Community and Family Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology, Division of Epidemiology, before joining North Carolina State University.
Her research goal is to improve understanding of how early development influences risk of common chronic diseases, especially those that exhibit racial/ethnic differences in incidence and/or mortality, including cardiometabolic diseases and some cancers. To accomplish this, her research program follows a cohort of newborns to identify stable epigenetic targets that are acquired early and mitotically heritable and associated with known risk factors for early obesity as such markers can serve as risk markers, and conduct population-based studies to determine whether identified epigenetic targets are associated with risk of these obesity-related chronic diseases in adulthood.
Read More (External Links)
Patrick McGowan
Associate Professor, Biological Sciences, University of Toronto
McGowan is interested in the interaction between the genome and the environment. Effects that influence the way genes work without changing their DNA sequence are called “epigenetic” effects. He studies epigenetic changes in brain systems that are important for behaviour and the response to stress.
In his lab, they use molecular neuroscience and systems biology approaches to study physiology and behaviour (phenotype). The specific focus is on the role of parental factors early in life in altering the function of genes involved in the response to stress. They study a variety or organisms, from animals in the lab, to wild populations and humans.
Read More (External Link)
