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CIHR CAFÉ SCIENTIFIQUE - Epigenetics, and how early experiences may affect your health later in life
What causes the complex illnesses associated with aging, like cancer and heart disease? Each day we discover new genes associated with these diseases. But as we learn more about the genetic code, it becomes clearer that what’s written in our DNA is only part of the story. There are other factors, such as socioeconomic status, that seem to play an important role in health.
Now a new area of research, known as epigenetics, is building upon our knowledge of the human genome. Epigeneticists study the ways that our environment can have a long-term impact on the activity of our genes. And recent advances in technology are giving researchers remarkable new tools to study how nature interacts with nurture.
Date: March 27, 2012
Time: 7:00pm
Where: Granville Island Hotel, 1253 Johnston St., Vancouver
Cost: Free
Hosted by: CIHR and its Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction in collaboration with the Canadian Epigenetics, Environment and Health Research Consortium.
Experts:
Dr. W. Thomas Boyce, PhD
Professor, Sunny Hill Health Centre/BC Leadership Chair in Child Development
School of Population and Public Health and Faculty of Medicine, UBC
Dr. Martin Hirst, PhD
Scientist, Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre, BC ...
Posted:March 14, 2012, 2:44 p.m.
Now online: Presentations from the December 2011 Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia of the National Academy of Sciences
Entitled Biological Embedding of Early Social Adversity: From Fruit Flies to Kindergarters, the Sackler Colloquia focused on socioeconomic position as the single most powerful determinant of health and development within every human society on earth. Rapidly accumulating evidence suggests that differential exposure to early childhood adversities contributes strongly to the observed social disparities in mental and physical health, cognitive and socioemotional development, and lifetime educational and economic attainment. Studies in a broad array of species, ranging from invertebrates to human and nonhuman primates, are elucidating fundamental mechanisms by which social stratification is induced and maintained and by which socially partitioned adversities are transduced into neurobiological and genomic processes. Using new developmental neurogenomic approaches, science is poised to finally understand why disease, disorder and developmental misfortune are so unevenly distributed within human populations. This colloquium convened a world class, cross disciplinary assembly of basic, biomedical, and social scientists to explore the biological embedding of early social adversity across multiple species, from fruit flies to human kindergartners.
Speakers included Clyde Hertzman, Tom Boyce, Janet Werker, Michael Kobor and many others. See HELP researcher presentation below and visit the Sackler Colloquia's YouTube Channel to view the other presentations.
The Arthur M. Sackler ...
Posted:Jan. 18, 2012, 11:58 a.m.
