In June 2022, I had the opportunity to attend the ‘Epigenetics in the Nervous System: development and disease’ conference jointly organized by Gonçalo Castelo-Branco, Ana Pombo and Abcam in MDC, Berlin. As the first in-person conference since the start of the pandemic for many of the attendees, the excitement in the air was palpable. This was especially evident during the enthusiastic poster sessions where overlapping discussions resulted in everyone raising their voices to be heard over each other, ignoring the usherers’ call to adjourn to dinner.
I particularly enjoyed Maja Jagodich’s talk on profiling DNA methylation changes in the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis (MS). Classification of DNA methylation changes in blood cells allows for insight into processes affected at different disease stages. Given the many environmental factors attributed to the disease, Maja’s lab works on the multi-faceted effects on different cell types affected in MS, including changes in neurons, microglia and bronchoalveolar cells.
Daniele Canzio’s talk on protocadherin expression in neural wiring was supplemented with lucid illustrations. In neurons, stochastic expression of protocadherin alpha (Pcdha) genes serve a barcoding function distinct to each individual neuron. Interestingly, random selection of Pcdha expression was found to be dependent on changes in genome architecture, including CTCF binding and cohesin loading. Also covered were the development of new multi-omic techniques such as nano-CUT&Tag from Marek Bartosovic and Boyan Bonev’s 3DRAM-seq.
Previous conferences that I attended have been either epigenetics- or neuroscience-centered, so it was nice to be part of one that encompasses both spheres of my research.
