Search results for "EPIGENETICS"
showing 7 items of 517 documents
The effect of a temperature-sensitive prophage on the evolution of virulence in an opportunistic bacterial pathogen.
2022
https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.16638 Abstract Viruses are key actors of ecosystems and have major impacts on global biogeochemical cycles. Prophages deserve particular attention as they are ubiquitous in bacterial genomes and can enter a lytic cycle when triggered by environmental conditions. We explored how temperature affects the interactions between prophages and other biological levels by using an opportunistic pathogen, the bacterium Serratia marcescens, that harbours several prophages and that had undergone an evolution experiment under several temperature regimes. We found that the release of one of the prophages was temperature-sensitive and malleable to evolutionary changes. We furthe…
An RNA Memory Mechanism to Inherit Epigenetic Marks
2012
Epigenetic regulation of sex differences in susceptibility to stress
2017
Under current diagnostics depression and stress related mood disorders have a higher occurrence in women than men. Little is known of the biological mechanisms contributing to these sex differences and how they may impact potential new therapeutics. Here we examine how DNA methylation contributes to sex specific stress vulnerability in adult animals. Mice of both sexes were exposed to variable stress and given a behavioral test battery to examine stress sensitivity. Female mice expressed depressionassociated behavior across all tests stress exposure whereas males were behaviorally resilient. Markers of pre and post-synaptic plasticity and spine morphology were examined using a combination o…
Age- and quality-dependent DNA methylation correlate with melanin-based coloration in a wild bird
2018
Abstract Secondary sexual trait expression can be influenced by fixed individual factors (such as genetic quality) as well as by dynamic factors (such as age and environmentally induced gene expression) that may be associated with variation in condition or quality. In particular, melanin‐based traits are known to relate to condition and there is a well‐characterized genetic pathway underpinning their expression. However, the mechanisms linking variable trait expression to genetic quality remain unclear. One plausible mechanism is that genetic quality could influence trait expression via differential methylation and differential gene expression. We therefore conducted a pilot study examining…
Model organisms and their application in environmental epigenetics
2020
Abstract Epigenetic mechanisms operate at the interface between the environment and the genome of a given organism. More particularly, they convert environmental stimuli as diverse as chemical pollutants, nutritional components, temperature changes, and social conditions into changes in the chromatin landscape, which influence gene expression in the absence of alterations in the DNA sequence, ultimately leading to phenotype adaptation and diversification. The use of experimental model organisms in epigenetics research allows for the careful manipulation of environmental factors in order to understand how they mechanistically modulate the establishment, maintenance, and inheritance of epigen…
Infection-induced chromatin modifications facilitate translocation of herpes simplex virus capsids to the inner nuclear membrane
2021
Herpes simplex virus capsids are assembled and packaged in the nucleus and move by diffusion through the nucleoplasm to the nuclear envelope for egress. Analyzing their motion provides conclusions not only on capsid transport but also on the properties of the nuclear environment during infection. We utilized live-cell imaging and single-particle tracking to characterize capsid motion relative to the host chromatin. The data indicate that as the chromatin was marginalized toward the nuclear envelope it presented a restrictive barrier to the capsids. However, later in infection this barrier became more permissive and the probability of capsids to enter the chromatin increased. Thus, although …