Moving out of the back room to the centre stage at The Railway Club (2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. at Seymour St., Vancouver, Canada), the next Café Scientifique Vancouver talk will be given by Michael Kobor on Tuesday, Apr. 30, 2013 at 7:30 pm. Here’s the talk description, from the announcement,
A Dialogue in Epigenetics: How Does the Environment Get Under Our Skin?
The scientific community has known for some time that both genetics and the environment influence our health and well-being. While extensive research has focused on how our genes affect health outcomes, environmental factors have had less attention. Now a new area of research, known as epigenetics, is expanding upon our knowledge of the human genome. Epigeneticists study how our environment can have a long-term impact on the activity of our genes. Of particular concern to health researchers are the effects of socioeconomic conditions on children, and how early life stress may impact individuals and their genes down the road. Dr. Michael Kobor and his research team make use of recent advances in technology to study this interface between genetics and environment. And it is becoming clearer that what’s written in our DNA is only part of the story. Neither ‘nature,’ nor ‘nurture’ alone, is entirely one’s fate.
Kobor has his own lab (Kobor Lab) at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics, here’s more from his bio page,
Genes can be influenced by the environment, which means our lifestyle can impact the expression of our genes. Epigenetics is the field that studies the relationship between our environment and our genes.
“Epigenetics is a very important component for studying human health,” says Dr. Kobor. “There is increasing evidence that epigenetic modifications are altered in a variety of diseases, such as cancer, and neurodegenerative disease.”
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MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS & PUBLICATIONS
UBC Faculty of Medicine, Distinguished Achievement Award for Excellence in Basic Science Research – 2012
Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies Early Career UBC Scholar – 2012
Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar Award – 2005
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Scholar Award – 2006
Kobor MS, Archambault J, Lester W, Holstege FC, Gileadi O, Jansma DB, Jennings EG, Kouyoumd- jian F, Davidson AR, Young RA, Greenblatt J. An unusual eukaryotic protein phosphatase required for transcription by RNA polymerase II and CTD dephosphorylation in S. cerevisiae. Molecular Cell. 1999 Jul;4(1):55–62.
Kobor MS, Venkatasubrahmanyam S, Meneghini MD, Gin JW, Jennings JL, Link AJ, Madhani HD, and Rine J. A Protein Complex Containing the Conserved Swi2/Snf2-Related ATPase Swr1p Deposits Histone Variant H2A.Z into Euchromatin. PLoS Biology. 2004 May; 2(5):E131.
Given the description for the talk is free of jargon (unless you consider “DNA” and “epigenetics” to be jargon), I would expect the talk itself to follow suit.