Jul 8, 2020
Yael David utilizes chemistry
and biology in her approach to understanding the impact of
environmental factors on
epigenetic structures and mechanism and how they in turn affect
our DNA.
In this podcast, she explains
Yael Davids is lab head and
assistant member in the Yael David Lab in the Chemical Biology
Program at Sloan Kettering Memorial Cancer Center. She is also an
assistant professor of pharmacology at Weill Cornell
Medicine. She explores multiple questions of how
epigenetic regulation of transcription functions alongside
histone packaging and DNA and various determinates.
She explains different schools of scientific thought in what
effects the
epigenetics of humans along with her own understanding that
environmental cues effect and determine epigenetics. She describes
how the environmental model explains things such as disease
initiation like diabetes, which isn't explained in other
models.
In this conversation, she
discusses how epigenetics change gene function from the changes in
DNA itself from protein recruitment to histones, structures that
help compact the DNA. She tells listeners how histones, which had
been viewed as only structural, also contain messaging that recruit
proteins. She then describes modification systems that combine for
a gradient mechanism, ultimately more of a dial than an on/off
switch.
Dr. David also discusses her research, from developing better
chemical tools for study to researching how damaged chromatin can
drive cancer and how certain enzymatic mechanisms can rewrite this
damage, a study that works towards therapeutic
development.
For more, see her lab web page
at www.mskcc.org/research/ski/labs/yael-david
and follow her on Twitter:
@David_Lab_MSK.
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK