GHGA Vorlesungsreihe: Martin Hirst (virtuell)
- 11 May 2023
Martin Hirst vom University of British Columbia (UCB) sprach im Rahmen der GHGA-Vorlesungsreihe ("Advances in Data-Driven Biomedicine") am 11. May 2023 über "THe EpiATLAS – a reference for human epigenomic research". Der Vortrag wird in englischer Sprache gehalten.
Diesen Vortrag können Sie hier ansehen.
Abstrakt:
The sequence of the human genome provides a foundation for understanding cellular processes in health and disease. However, the way in which this primary genetic information is organized within the cell also plays a critical role in its interpretation and execution. Epigenetic processes are essential for packaging and higher-level organization of the genome and thus are fundamental to normal development and cell differentiation, and are increasingly recognized as being involved in human disease.
Motivated by a desire to provide a foundation from which to build an understanding of normal epigenome states leading scientists and research funding agency representatives founded the International Human Epigenome Consortium (IHEC) in the fall of 2010. The primary goals of IHEC are to define and coordinate the production of reference maps of human epigenomes for key cellular states relevant to health and diseases, to facilitate rapid distribution of the data to the research community, and to accelerate translation of this new knowledge to improve human health. A critical component of IHEC in reaching these goals was to coordinate the development of common bioinformatics standards, data models and analytical tools to organize, integrate and display large quantities of epigenomic data. One such example is the Epigenome Reference Registry (EpiRR). Beyond supporting IHEC, the EpiRR (www.ebi.ac.uk/vg/epirr) and associated metadata standards and validator (github.com/IHEC) provides a mechanism to allow for the accessioning of protected human subject datasets and enables open searching of de-identified sample and experimental datasets.
Since its inception IHEC members have generated epigenomic datasets from over 2600 human subjects including 346 complete reference epigenomes from a wide variety of primary human tissues and cells. Building our initial Roadmap (Nature 2015, Cell 2016) these data have been uniformly processed using containerized workflows and linked to standardized metadata to generate an EpiATLAS. In this talk I will overview the EpiATLAS, the standardized structures developed to support it and its application in human health.
Biographie:
Dr. Hirst Leiter der Epigenomik am kanadischen Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre at BC Cancer, Professor in der Abteilung für Mikrobiologie und Immunologie und stellvertretender Direktor des Michael Smith Laboratory an der University of British Columbia (UBC).
Seine Forschung konzentriert sich auf das Verständnis epigenetischer Fehlfunktionen bei Krebs. Sein Labor entwickelt experimentelle und computerbasierte Instrumente zur Charakterisierung normaler und veränderter Zelltypen bis auf die Ebene einzelner Zellen. Er wendet diese Instrumente an, um den epigenomischen Zustand normaler und transformierter Zelltypen zu erforschen und therapeutische Anfälligkeiten zu entdecken und auszunutzen.
In den letzten zehn Jahren hat er die Entwicklung eines international anerkannten epigenomischen Forschungsprogramms bei BC Cancer und UBC geleitet. Er leitet das Centre of Epigenomic Mapping Technologies (CEMT), das eines der beiden kanadischen Zentren für epigenomische Kartierung darstellt, die im Rahmen der CIHR-Signaturinitiative finanziert werden: das Canadian Epigenetics, Environment and Health Research Consortium (CEEHRC). Dr. Hirst ist Vorsitzender des wissenschaftlichen Lenkungsausschusses des International Human Epigenome Consortium (ihec.org) und leitet das Canadian Epigenetics, Environment and Health Research Consortium Network (epigenomes.ca) mit dem Auftrag, die epigenetische Forschung in Kanada und international voranzutreiben. Dr. Hirst erhielt einen TFRI New Investigator Award (2015) und den UBC Killam Research Prize (2018) und wurde über 48.000 Mal zitiert (Clarivate, 2018 Highly Cited Researcher).