“Role of histone variant H3.3 in telomere maintenance and tumorigenesis." Thursday 20 Oct

Hudson Seminar -Thursday 20 Oct

12-1 pm, Lecture Theatre 1, Monash Medical Centre.

Our speaker will be A/Prof Lee Wong, Cancer Program Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI)Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Monash University, Australia.

Light refreshments to follow presentation outside the Lecture Theatre.

A/Prof Wong is a group leader at Monash University, Australia. Her long-standing research interest is to identify new chromatin factors that control chromosome stability and genetic transmission. In particular, her team aims to uncover basic epigenetic mechanisms that regulate centromere and telomere function. Recent studies have identified the frequent mutations of histone variant H3.3 and its chaperone ATRX in human cancers, especially, in telomerase null cancer that use an ALT (Alternative Lengthening of telomeres) for telomere elongation. Their current projects aim to define the function of histone variant H3.3 and ATRX in controlling transcription silencing at the telomeres and in the global genome. They also investigate genome-wide epigenetic defects associated with H3.3 mutations and the loss of ATRX function in human cancers.