This interview is with Dr Christian Bronner, Editor in Chief of
Genetics and Epigenetics, and Group Leader of the Angiogenesis and Epigenetics group in the research laboratory CNRS UMR 7175 at the University Louis Pasteur’s Faculty of Pharmacy, located in Illkirch, France.
Tom: What would you say is the primary focus of your research effort (and how do you refer to your 'sub-area')?The overall goal of my research is to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms occurring in cancer, particularly to identify what is going wrong in terms of gene expression and how these errors are transmitted from a mother cell to the daughter cells. A fundamental question can resume my research; how can a cancer cell inherit its cancer signature from the parental cell? Thus, you may understand that I have a fondness for epigenetics.
Specifically, my research aims to describe the role of the UHRF1 gene in the duplication of the DNA methylation patterns on the daughter DNA strand as well as in the inheritance of the “histone code”.
Tom: What do you consider to be the most significant developments arising from research in your area?Undeniably, the discovery that gene expression is regulated by other information than simply the DNA sequence and that this information can be transmitted to the descent throughout mitosis and probably throughout generations. DNA methylation and the so-called histone code have revolutionized our understanding of genetics.
Tom: What do you consider to be the most significant open questions and research challenges in your area?A lot of intriguing questions still remain open in epigenetics as well as in genetics; our way of thinking, our behavior, our feelings are this all embedded in our genes and/or “epigenes”. And all this, is it transmitted to our future generations and how?
Tom: Tell us about your collaborative research. Who else do you directly work with and what are the aims of your collaboration?Although I am working with some colleagues both within my lab and the Faculty of Pharmacy of Strasbourg, amazingly, the majority of my collaborative research is taking place outside France. I like to collaborate with researchers from other countries. It is greatly rewarding. I have two very fruitful collaborations, i.e., with the Structural Genomic Consortium of Toronto (Dr Sirano Dhe-Paganon, Department of Physiology, University of Toronto) and with the Sbarro Institute at Philadelphia (Dr Marcella Macaluso and Dr Antonio Giordano).
Tom: Is balancing all these activities challenging? How do you deal with it and what tools do you find useful in doing so? Research in genetics and epigenetics is now at the cutting edge and is entering a drastic complexity which requires specialized competences. Therefore, my challenge is to progress in my research area thanks to the collaborations with researchers that have such competences.
Tom: When did you decide to be primarily involved in the field that you are now in? It is now about 15 years that I decided to become familiar with molecular biology. Indeed, it was in the mid 90’s that I have chosen to learn what molecular biology can bring to my research. At the same time I started a research project aimed to identifying transcription factors involved in the regulation of the topoisomerase II alpha gene expression. This project has lead to the discovery of the UHRF1 gene that we called at that time ICBP90.
Tom: What resources do you find indispensible for your research work? Connecting scientists by internet is to my opinion one of the major revolution in terms of scientific collaboration. To share ideas and analyse data on a real-time basis is the resource that has rocked our way of working and progressing.
Tom: What do you think about the development of open access publishing and open access development? How has it changed your perspective on research or development practices? As I just told before, what is revolutionizing Science, is the speed of scientific exchanges. Everything, that can contribute to facilitate it, is an excellent tool. In this way, open access publishing is completely changing our way of thinking and working.
Tom: What books do you think should be required reading for researchers working in your area?Books concerning genetics and epigenetics, of course.
Tom: What books are current on your reading list? On the professional side, I have just ordered this book: "Epigenetics: Principles of Eukaryotic Genome Control" (
Amazon.com). On the hobby side, I like reading thrillers dealing with genetics but I am still waiting for the first thriller dealing with epigenetics.
Tom: Do you teach any courses? If so, which ones?Sometimes I teach some courses dealing with epigenetics but not on a regular basis. Hopefully, I will have opportunities to switch it on a regular fashion.
Tom: Which historical research figures do you think have most influenced you in how you think about research? Why are they significant?There is no historical research figure that had really influenced me, but my thoughts are going to all the researchers who had very innovative ideas and whose merit has only been recognized years later and sometimes never.
Tom: Which meetings do you attend on a regular basis?In the future, I will try to attend regularly the meeting of the EMBL (EMBO Conference Series on Chromatin and Epigenetics, Heidelberg, Germany).
Tom: If you could change something about how research in your area is conducted, used, perceived, or resourced, what would it be?
My dream would be, to be able to spend less time in writing projects in order to find financial supports. The ratio between the time spent versus the afforded grants is undeniably too low, at least in France. Also, the period starting from the writing until the decision and finally the availability of the funds is too long. International competition is becoming hard thanks to the speed of scientific exchanges, administration of the research should take this into account.
Epigenetics is one of the fastest evolving areas of postgenomic biology, I feel that this evolution will increase the gap between scientists and the lay public and we should consider that.
My thanks to Dr Bronner
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