Medicin & farmaci : Med fak: IMBIM: Research: Bjerling

Pernilla Bjerling, PhD, Assistant Professor

E-mail: Pernilla. Bjerling@imbim.uu.se

The S. pombe research group from left to right: Jenny Alfredsson-Timmins
(PhD student), Pernilla Bjerling (PI), Carolina Kristell (PhD student)

A lot of what is known today about epigenetics stems from studies in fission yeast, Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Epigenetics are changes in the genome function that does not occur in the DNA sequence and that can be inherited to daughter cells and sometimes to the offspring. Epigenetic changes in the genome is believed to be of major contribution in several diseases like cancer, diabetes type II and obesity. Still, very little is known about how to reverse disease-causing changes in the epigenome. One mechanism of epigenetics is the formation of different types of chromatin. The basic unit of chromatin is the nucleosome, consisting of a core of histone proteins that the DNA is wrapped around. The histones have different types of modifications that influence gene expression. Another, not so well studied mechanism of epigenetics concerns the influence of subnuclear localisation of the chromatin/expression status of a locus/gene. By using fission yeast as a model system we can learn more about what determines the epigenome and how switches between different types of chromatin can occur. We mainly do our localisation studies by live analysis using real-time fluorescence microscopy. A region of interest in the genome is labelled with Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP). GFP is fused to the E. coli Lac Repressor protein (Lac-R) and expressed ectopically in the cell where tandem repeats of the lacO sequence has been inserted into a specific locus of the chromosome via homologous recombination. In addition, in these cells, the nuclear membrane (NM) and the Spindle Pole Body (SPB) are labelled with other fluorochromes.

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