Environmental Epigenomics and Disease Susceptibility

Keystone Symposia

Location: Asheville, NC
Date: March 27, 2011
Conference Website
Organizers: Randy Jirtle, Moshe Szyf, Frederick Tyson

Meeting Summary

The objective of this conference is to provide evidence that environmental exposures during early development can alter the risk of developing medical conditions, such as asthma, autism, cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, and schizophrenia later in life by modifying the epigenome. Epigenetic research promises to markedly improve our ability to diagnosis, prevent, and treat the pathological conditions of humans; however, it also introduces unique legal and ethical issues.

Topics:

• Epigenetic Mechanisms that Underpin Metabolic and Cardiovascular Diseases    
• Famine, Epigenetics and the Risk of Schizophrenia    
• Nature of Human Transgenerational Responses    
• Epigenetics: The Memory System for the Developmental Origins of Disease Susceptibility    
• Chromatin Crosstalk in Development and Disease    
• Sequencing Epigenomes    
• CTCF Dysfunction, Epigenetic Deregulation and Cancer Susceptibility    
• In vitro Fertilization, Cloning and Stem Cells
• Therapeutic Cloning and Stem Cell Development    
• Genomic Plasticity and the Developmental Origins of Adult Disease Susceptibility    
• Epigenetic Regulation of Stem Cells    
• Epigenetics, Imprinting and Cell Fate Commitment    
• Postnatal Epigenetic Programming of the Brain
• Early Life Environment and the Epigenome    
• Epigenetics, Brain Evolution and Behavior    
• Regulation of Chromatin Structure in Memory Formation    
• Human Cancer Epigenetics    
• Environmental Exposures, Epigenetics and Human Health    
• Complex Diseases: Epigenetic Manifestation of Environmental Exposures    
• Fetal and Early Postnatal Environmental Exposures and Female Reproductive Health Effects    
• Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance in Health and Disease    
• Epigenetic Transgenerational Inheritance following Exposure to Endocrine Disruptors    
• Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance in Drosophila    
• Environmental Studies of Schizophrenia through the Prism of Epigenetics    
• Epigenetics and Autism    
• Protein Methylation in Memory Formation    
• HDACs, Synaptic Plasticity and Memory Foundation    
• The Imprinted Brain: How Genes Set the Balance between Autism and Psychosis
• Evolution of Genomic Imprinting    
• Legal and Ethical Implications of Epigenetics