In this episode of the Epigenetics Podcast, we caught up with Sarah Kimmins from Université de Montreal to talk about her work on the epigenetics of human sperm cells.
The focus of Sarah Kimmins and her lab is how sperm and offspring health is impacted by the father's environment. The core of this is the sperm epigenome, which has been implicated in complex diseases such as infertility, cancer, diabetes, schizophrenia and autism. The Kimmins lab is interested which players play a role in this and came across the Histone post-translational modification H3K4me3. In this interview we talk about how the father's life choices can impact offspring health, which can also be inherited transgenerationally and how this can be used to develop intervention strategies to improve child and adult health.
References
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Siklenka, K., Erkek, S., Godmann, M., Lambrot, R., McGraw, S., Lafleur, C., Cohen, T., Xia, J., Suderman, M., Hallett, M., Trasler, J., Peters, A. H., & Kimmins, S. (2015). Disruption of histone methylation in developing sperm impairs offspring health transgenerationally. Science (New York, N.Y.), 350(6261), aab2006. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aab2006
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Lismer, A., Siklenka, K., Lafleur, C., Dumeaux, V., & Kimmins, S. (2020). Sperm histone H3 lysine 4 trimethylation is altered in a genetic mouse model of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. Nucleic acids research, 48(20), 11380–11393. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa712
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Lismer, A., Dumeaux, V., Lafleur, C., Lambrot, R., Brind'Amour, J., Lorincz, M. C., & Kimmins, S. (2021). Histone H3 lysine 4 trimethylation in sperm is transmitted to the embryo and associated with diet-induced phenotypes in the offspring. Developmental cell, 56(5), 671–686.e6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.devcel.2021.01.014
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H3K4me3, SET Proteins, Isw1, and their Role in Transcription (Jane Mellor)
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DNA Methylation and Mammalian Development (Déborah Bourc'his)
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