Dr. Brian Strahl, associate professor of biochemistry & biophysics at UNC-Chapel Hill, is featured in a video and story about the history of epigenetics in the Jan 15, 2014 (Vol. 34, No. 2) issue of GEN (Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News). The video and related featured story can be found here. Drs. David Allis and Brian Strahl formally proposed the ‘histone code’ about 14 years ago. At that time, Dr. Strahl was a postdoctoral fellow in David Allis' lab. This hypothesis provided an explanation for how distinct histone modifications, such as acetylation and methylation, could regulate epigenetic inheritance, gene expression and the control of cell growth and differentiation. However, limited experimental support exists for this hypothesis, and to date, it is unclear whether the binding of DNA-associated proteins to combinatorially-modified histones is a universal phenomenon of these regulators or is restricted to a subset of histone-binding proteins. To address this long-standing question, Dr. Strahl’s lab is investigating how DNA-associated proteins bind to one or more histone modifications to regulate cellular function. With his colleagues, the Strahl lab has been utilizing high-density histone peptide microarrays to determine how proteins with specialized histone interaction domains associate with multiple histone modifications to regulate chromatin structure and function. Recent work has uncovered how the E3 ubiquitin ligase UHRF1 binds to histone H3 in a combinatorial manner – a binding event that governs the epigenetic inheritance of DNA methylation. To learn more, visit Brian Strahl’s webpage.