Page 57 - Hormel Institute Annual Report 2021-22

External environmental factors can regulate cellular gene expression through the epigenetic mechanism, but the molecular mechanism is unknown. Our preliminary study indicates that the cellular iron metabolic pathway can regulate the chromatin structure and gene expression through the replication-coupled parental histone transfer. It is a break- through discovery in the epigenetic research field. Currently, we are still working on this research direction.
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Current research projects:
1) Functional analysis on epigenetic inheritance of DNA polymerase and MCM helicase.
2) Regulation mechanism of parental histone assembly in yeast.
3) New approaches to study DNA replication coupled process.
Recent Publications:
• Yao, Y., Wen, Q., Zhang, T., Yu, C., Chan, K. M., & Gan, H. (2022). Advances in Approaches to Study Chromatin-Mediated Epigenetic Memory.
ACS Synth Biol, 11(1), 16-25.
• Wang, D., Yu, C., Zhang, J., & Peterson, T. (2022). Excision and reinsertion of Ac macrotransposons in maize. Genetics, 221(4), iyac067.
• Serra-Cardona, A., Duan, S., Yu, C., & Zhang, Z. (2022). H3K4me3 recognition by the COMPASS complex facilitates the restoration of this histone mark following DNA replication. Sci Adv, 8(18), eabm6246.
• Serra-Cardona, A., Yu, C., Zhang, X., Hua, X., Yao, Y., Zhou, J., Gan, H., & Zhang, Z. (2021). A mechanism for Rad53 to couple leading- and lagging-strand DNA synthesis under replication stress in budding yeast. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 118(38), e2109334118.
Defect in parental histone transfer decrease homologous recombination frequency Mutations in parental histone H3-H4 chaperones (Mcm2 and Polymerase epsilon) levitate cellular-free histone level and inhibit the error-free DNA repair pathway (homologous recombination).
Lab research activities:
https://www.hi.umn.edu/research/research-sections/inheritance-of- epigenetic-information/
ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1885-7224