Matt Silver and Branwen Hennig, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Venue: The Seminar Room, OS6, Second Floor, Oakfield House

Title:  Nutritional Gentics and Epigenetics in The Gambia

Abstract:

The MRC Unit International Nutrition Group’s mission is to gain novel insights into the basic mechanisms linking diet and disease in order to develop more effective community and clinical interventions.  Much of the group’s work is conducted at our field station in rural Gambia (MRC Keneba), the result of an exceptional partnership between the MRC and local people stretching back almost 70 years.

We will give some historical background on the MRC Keneba research station, briefly describing the cohort, datasets and platforms that are available to researchers on a collaborative basis.  The main part of the talk will review our research linking periconceptional maternal nutrition with changes in offspring DNA methylation, with a particular focus on our recent finding suggesting that periconceptional environment influences DNA methylation at VTRNA2-1, a tumour supressor gene and regulator of immune function [Silver et al. Genome Biol. 16, 118 (2015)].

Biographies

Branwen Hennig is a genetic epidemiologist with a longstanding interest in the genetic and environmental determinants of health and disease in populations living in in low- and middle-income settings. She has a broad research portfolio in genetics and epigenetics of infectious and non-infectious diseases, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. She currently works within MRC International Nutrition Group and is based primarily at the London School for Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) with frequent visits to the MRC Unit, The Gambia. Much of Branwen’s research is conducted there, linking in with research initiatives across the continent, e.g. via the African Society of Human Genetics (AfSHG) and H3Africa projects. She previously held a Wellcome Trust Fellowship at LSHTM and worked at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford. Her background is in human molecular genetics and she trained in epidemiology at LSHTM. 

Matt Silver is a member of the MRC International Nutrition Group (ING) at LSHTM and MRC Unit, The Gambia.  Matt’s research currently focuses on investigating the effects of peri-conceptional nutrition on the offspring epigenome, as a potential mechanism mediating observed associations between early-life nutrition and health and disease through the life course.  Prior to joining the ING he took an MSc in Bioinformatics and Theoretical Systems Biology, followed by a PhD in bioinformatics / statistical genetics, both at Imperial College, London. During his PhD he focussed on sparse regression methods for the identification of gene pathways associated with quantitative traits, with a particular emphasis on pathways analysis applied to neuroimaging genetics.  

ALL WELCOME