Sarah Elderkin

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Research Summary

Chromatin is subject to a wide range of post translational modifications which play an important role in epigenetic gene regulation. Recently our understanding of the function of these modifications in processes such as gene regulation, DNA repair, and replication has improved greatly.

Over the last decade a large number of enzymes responsible for these modifications have been identified. We are interested in one particular set of chromatin modifying complexes the polycomb repressor complexes. Polycomb repressor complexes are key epigenetic regulators involved in both establishing gene expression patterns during development and maintaining long-term cellular memory. Maintenance of cellular gene expression memory is an important process in regulation of embryonic stem cell self renewal, cell identity, cell proliferation and tumor development.

We are interested in understanding how epigenetic modifying complexes are potentially regulated by different signalling pathways and how polycomb repressive complexes are recruited and recognise specific genomic loci to maintain specific transcription profiles in mammalian cells. (More...)