Brain development controlled by epigenetic factor
McGill researchers have discovered, for the first time, the importance of a key epigenetic regulator in the development of the hippocampus, a part of the brain associated with learning, memory and neural stem cells. Epigenetic regulators change the way specific genes function without altering their DNA sequence. By working with mutant mice as models, the research team, led by Prof. Xiang-Jiao Yang, of McGill’s Goodman Cancer Center & Department of Medicine, McGill University Health Center, was able to link the importance of a specific epigenetic regulator known as BRPF1 to the healthy development of a region in the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus.
“This research supports how important epigenetic regulation is to brain development and health during one’s lifetime, but this is something that we are just starting to understand,” says Yang. “The next step for us is to try and understand better how different epigenetic regulators in the brain interact with one another to integrate information from life experience and from the environment.”
The research was carried out by Linya You, a PhD student in the laboratory, in collaboration with Edwin Wang’s group at National Research Council of Canada and Morag Park’s group at Goodman Cancer Center of McGill University. The research was supported by Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Canadian Cancer Society.
To read the full papers ‘The lysine acetyltransferase activator Brpf1 governs dentate gyrus development through neural stem cells and progenitors’ in PLOS Genetics: http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1005034; and ‘Deficiency of the chromatin regulator Brpf1 causes abnormal brain development’ in Journal Biological Chemistry: http://www.jbc.org/content/early/2015/01/07/jbc.M114.635250.long