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Novel approaches to uncovering effects of anti-cancer agents targeting epigenetic modifiers.

School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences | PHD
Funding
Unfunded
Reference Number
SMED-2201-1055
Application Deadline
None specified
Start Date
None specified

Overview

Developing novel multi-functional reagents for simultaneous analysis of chromatin accessibility and DNA-protein interactions.

Deregulation of the intimate links between chromatin structure, function and transcriptional activity are increasingly understood to play a crucial role in the development and maintenance of cancers.  Understanding the differences between healthy and cancerous cells is important for elucidating cellular mechanisms determining not only the initial response to treatment, but also drug tolerance, and development of induced anticancer drug resistance.  Moreover, this understanding could lead to discovery of new cellular mechanisms involved in malignancy, as well as ways to categorise and treat cancers.

As a result, cancer researchers are increasingly reliant on the use of multiple levels of evidence from assays measuring open chromatin (e.g. DNAse Hypersensitivity, ATAC-seq) and protein-DNA interactions (e.g. ChIP-seq, Mass-spec) for interrogating the “Epigenome”. Critically, none of the currently available methodologies enable simultaneous analysis of DNA-protein interactions (or histone modification) and chromatin accessibly genome-wide (or at specific loci).  This multidisciplinary project supervised jointly by Dr Simon McDade and Dr Konstantin Panov aims to build on preliminary work wherein, we have developed novel approach using novel protein fusions that potentially enable such analyses.  The applicant will develop and test a variety of genomics applications (and data analysis pipelines) and apply these to the analysis of the effects of anti-cancer agents targeting epigenetic modifier or transcription.

Project Summary
Supervisor

Dr Simon McDade

More Information

askmhls@qub.ac.uk

Research Profile


Mode of Study

Full-time: 3 Years


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