Elucidating the 3-D epigenetic determinants of activity-dependent gene expression in mammalian neurons

Public Health Relevance/Narrative Brains have evolved to process and store information from the outside world and do so through synaptic connections among interconnected networks of neurons. Our work will illuminate higher-order genome folding as an unexplored dimension of the long-range epigenetic control governing neuronal activation in the mammalian brain. Synaptic defects underlie many neurological disorders, therefore understanding the molecular mechanisms governing activity-dependent expression is of tremendous importance toward our knowledge of how neural circuits are disrupted in brain disease.