Waisman Home » Events » Hongjun Song, PhD

Terrence R. Dolan Lecture

Date: March 23, 2012

Time: Noon to 1:00 pm

Title: "Neuronal activity-Induced Changes of DNA Methylation Landscape in the Brain."

Speaker: Hongjun Song, PhD
Institute for cell Engineering
Department of Neurology and Neuroscience
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

About the Talk: Epigenetic modifications of chromatin molecules, including the genomic DNA, histone proteins, and possibly RNA components, play critical roles in orchestrating transcriptomes of all cell types and their developmental potentials. Emerging evidence suggests important roles for epigenetic regulation in activity-dependent brain functions, including synaptic plasticity, learning and memory, circadian rhythm, drug addiction, and adult neurogenesis. Recent studies have further implicated critical roles of DNA methylation changes in neural plasticity. Our early studies have shown that neuronal stimulation induces DNA demethylation at specific promoters of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and fibroblast growth factor 1 in a Gadd45b- and TET1-dependent fashion in the adult mouse dentate gyrus (Ma et al. Science 2009; Guo et al. Cell 2011). Using a next-generation sequencing-based method for genome-wide analysis at a single-nucleotide resolution, we recently showed that 1.4% of 219,991 CpGs measured exhibit rapid active demethylation or de novo methylation in adult mouse dentate granule neurons in vivo before and after synchronous neuronal activation (Guo et al. Nat. Neurosci. 2011). These activity-modified CpGs exhibit a broad genomic distribution with significant enrichment in low-CpG density regions, and are associated with brain-specific genes related to neuronal plasticity. Our study implicates modification of the neuronal DNA methylome as a previously under-appreciated mechanism for activity-dependent epigenetic regulation in the adult nervous system. I will present our latest progress on molecular mechanisms regulating DNA methylation dynamics in the adult brain, genome-wide analysis of DNA modifications, and implication of active DNA demethylation in mental disorders.

About the Speaker: Hongjun Song, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Neuroscience, Director of the Stem Cell Biology Program in the Institute for Cell Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Song's research focuses on adult neural stem cells and neurogenesis. Dr. Song has received several awards including the Klingenstein Fellowship Awards in the Neuroscience (2003), McKnight Scholar Award (2006), Inaugural Young Investigator Award of the Chinese Biological Investigators Society (2008), NARSAD Independent Investigator Award (2008), and the Rising Star Award from International Mental Health Research Organization (2009). He was honored in 2008 with Young Investigator Award from the Society for Neuroscience. He is a member of the Faculty of 1000 Biology Neurobiology of Disease and Regeneration Section of the Neuroscience Faculty and on the editorial board for several journals.

Where: Friends of the Waisman Center Auditorium, First Floor, Annex

For Further Information: Contact Teresa Palumbo at 263-5837 or palumbo@waisman.wisc.edu

This Seminar Series is partially funded by the John D. Wiley Conference Center Fund, the Friends of the Waisman Center and NIH grant P30 HD003352.