Fion Jenkinson
Identification of critical cell memory factors by genome-wide CRISPR screening
Fion Jenkinson, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research at University of Copenhagen, has received a Lundbeck Foundation Postdoc grant worth DKK 2,399,171.
About the project
Life relies on the inheritance of information upon cell division. All the information needed to make an organism is encoded in the DNA-based genome, and the same genome resides in every cell in a human body. But cells within a body perform very different functions to each other e.g. neurons or muscle cells.
As an organism develops from a single cell, cells gradually specialize into these different cell types as they divide. It is critical during this process that these cells ’remember’ their identity so that the correct, healthy cells end up in appropriate locations (tissues). The memory of this cell-type identity is thought to be encoded by chemical, ’epigenetic’ marks associated with DNA. These marks allow the cell to only access the regions of genomic information required for its healthy functioning. Diseased cells, such as those in cancer and neurodegeneration, have changes in their epigenetic marks compared to healthy cells. So, it is important to know how these marks are inherited to understand both healthy development and disease.
Fion Jenkinson’s research project aims to use cutting-edge technology to discover what genes are needed for cells to pass on epigenetic information, particularly during neural development. This will then enable experiments to understand the molecular mechanisms of cellular memory. The results of this work can then be used to understand how organs like the brain form, and to develop treatments for diseases where this goes wrong.
