Heritable, covalent modifications to DNA and histone proteins play an important role in an organism’s development and survival. Such epigenetic mechanisms have been increasingly linked to risks to a broad spectrum of human diseases. However, the exact function of epigenetic marks in development and disease pathogenesis remains to be better understood.
Empowered by recent technological advances in DNA sequencing technologies, epigenetic regulatory mechanisms have been investigated in a growing number of organisms at increasingly high resolution and scope. The results are an explosion in new genomic technologies, large-scale datasets and computational resources. The growing research field is now referred to as “epigenomics”.
Epigenomics is still a young and growing field, and there are many challenges to investigators working on specific model organisms or disease who want to adopt this approach. This meeting is designed to capture the recent progresses in the field in the same time bridge the technological gaps in the field, such as datasets availability, method adoption, data interpretation.