School Seminar Series - Associate Professor Timothy W. Bredy - The University of Queensland

Associate Professor Timothy W. Bredy - The University of Queensland

Long Noncoding RNAs and Memory

Long noncoding RNAs have emerged as key regulators of gene expression. To date, due to their low level and often state dependent manner of expression. Most effort toward understanding the functional relevance of this class of RNA has been focused on cancer or ES cell differentiation. Here, I will present recent our work using new approaches to detect lncRNA in the brain and discuss the functional role of experience-dependent lncRNA activity in learning and memory.

Speaker bio: 

Associate Professor Timothy Bredy earned a PhD in Neuroscience from McGill University in 2004. Following CIHR and NSERC funded postdoctoral fellowships at UCLA, in 2009 he established the Cognitive Neuroepigenetics Laboratory at the University of Queensland. He is currently an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow. Research in the Bredy laboratory is elucidating how the genome is connected to the environment through epigenetic modifications, and how this relationship shapes brain and behaviour throughout life. The group is particularly interested in how epigenetic mechanisms, including DNA methylation, histone modifications and the activity of non-coding RNAs, as well as RNA modification, regulate the formation and maintenance of memory.