It has long been understood that a parent’s DNA is the principal determinant of health and disease in offspring. Yet inheritance via DNA is only part of the story; a father’s lifestyle such as diet, being overweight and stress levels have been linked to health consequences for his offspring. This occurs through the epigenome - heritable biochemical marks associated with the DNA and proteins that bind it. But how the information is transmitted at fertilization along with the exact mechanisms and molecules in sperm that are involved in this process has been unclear until now.
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Published on: 16 Mar 2021
McGill researchers identify new markers for early detection of cervical cancer
By Ashley Rabinovitch
Published on: 13 Feb 2020
By Vardit Ravitsky, Associate Professor of Bioethics at the University of Montreal and Sarah Kimmins, Associate Professor at McGill University and Canada Research Chair in Epigenetics, Reproduction and Development.
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Published on: 27 Aug 2018
Researchers have known for a couple of decades that early life adversity can affect the way that particular genes function through a process called epigenetics - a bit like a dimmer switch on a light, pushing gene activity up or down. What they haven’t been able to show until now is that POSITIVE early life experiences can have a similar effect, and that these effects can be seen over thirty years later.
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Published on: 1 May 2018
Rare hereditary recessive diseases were thought to be expressed in offspring only when both parents carry a mutation in the causal gene, but a new study is changing this paradigm. An international research team led by scientists at the University of Lorraine in France along with McGill University and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) in Canada discovered a new cause of a rare condition known as cblC, that they named “epi-cblC”. They reported it in patients from Europe and the United States.
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Published on: 30 Jan 2018
A team of researchers at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) has found an epigenetic modification that might be the cause of 15% of adult cancers of the throat linked to alcohol and tobacco use. This is a first in the field of epigenetics and the researchers are hopeful that the discovery can blaze a path in the development of new, targeted, more effective treatments that could arise over the next few years.
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Published on: 11 Jan 2017
One of the great mysteries in biology is how the many different cell types that make up our bodies are derived from a single cell and from one DNA sequence, or genome. We have learned a lot from studying the human genome, but have only partially unveiled the processes underlying cell determination. The identity of each cell type is largely defined by an instructive layer of molecular annotations on top of the genome – the epigenome – which acts as a blueprint unique to each cell type and developmental stage.
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Published on: 17 Nov 2016
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Published on: 7 Jun 2016
Discovery of how environmental memories may be transmitted from a man to his grandchildren
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Published on: 8 Oct 2015
Laval and McGill researchers team up with Health Canada and international researchers from Africa, Italy, Copenhagen and Greenland to investigate the impact of environmental exposures on the hertibale information coded in the fathers sperm and the health of offspring. The research team includes Professor Sarah Kimmins of the Department of Animal Science and is funded for $1.5 million by the Institute of Aboriginal Health, and the Institute of Gender and Health.
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Published on: 22 Apr 2015
Until now scientists have believed that the variations in traits such as our height, skin colour, tendency to gain weight or not, intelligence, tendency to develop certain diseases, etc., all of them traits that exist along a continuum, were a result of both genetic and environmental factors. But they didn’t know how exactly these things worked together. By studying ants, McGill researchers have identified a key mechanism by which environmental (or epigenetic) factors influence the expression of all of these traits, (along with many more).
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Published on: 11 Mar 2015
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.
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Published on: 10 Mar 2015
Researchers from Canada, the UK, Sweden and the US have discovered more than 30 genes that strongly affect an antibody involved in allergies and asthma. Some of the genes could provide targets for drugs to treat those conditions, according to the international team’s study, published online in Nature on Feb. 18.
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Published on: 18 Feb 2015
What if we could reduce rates of a wide range of devastating mental illnesses through early detection? Thanks to a significant gift of $2.9M from the Irving Ludmer Family Foundation to The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill University (The Neuro), hope is on the horizon through the expansion of a major collaboration to understand why some children are vulnerable to conditions like autism, attention deficit disorder and social anxiety, and what can be done to prevent these disorders before they take hold. This collaboration will also explore brain disorders in the aging population, such as dementia, in an unprecedented investigation of mental health across the lifespan.
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Published on: 21 Oct 2014
The number of days an expectant mother was deprived of electricity during Quebec’s Ice Storm (1998) predicts the epigenetic profile of her child, a new study finds.
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Published on: 29 Sep 2014
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