Specific Gene Expression and Epigenetics

Kasirajan Ayyanathan, PhD, received his PhD from the Department of Biochemistry, Indian Institute of Science. Subsequently, at Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, he conducted post-doctoral research on the signal transduction by purinergic receptors, a class of G-Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCR), in erythroleukemia cancer cells. Next, he was trained as a staff scientist at the Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, for almost ten years and studied transcription regulation, chromatin, and epigenetic regulatory mechanisms in cancer. Currently, he is at the Center for Molecular Biology and Biotechnology as a research associate professor at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in Boca Raton. He is the recipient of the Chern Memorial Award, presented by the Wistar Institute, and Howard Temin Career Research Award, presented by the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Ayyanathan is well trained in molecular biology, cell biology, and biochemistry with a main focus on studying transcription factors and gene regulation. He has contributed to several projects such as the generation of conditional transcriptional repressors that are directed against the endogenous oncogenes to inhibit malignant growth, the establishment of stable cell lines that express chromatin integrated transcriptional repressors and reporter genes to study the epigenetic mechanisms of KRAB repression, and identification of novel SNAG repression domain interacting proteins to understand their roles in transcriptional repression and oncogenesis. Dr. Ayyanathan has published several research articles in peer-reviewed journals in these subject areas.

Introduction. Part I: Eukaryotic DNA Methylation. Renal Kallikrein Excretion and Epigenetics in Human Acute Kidney Injury: Expression, Mechanisms and Consequences. COX-2 Gene Expression in Colon Cancer Tissue Related to Regulating Factors and Promoter Methylation Status. Down-Regulation of Promoter Methylation Level of CD4 Gene After MDV Infection in MD-Susceptible Chicken Line. A Combination of Transcriptome and Methylation Analyses Reveals Embryologically Relevant Candidate Genes in MRKH Patients. The Role of DNA Methylation in Common Skeletal Disorders. Enrichment-Based DNA Methylation Analysis Using Next-Generation Sequencing: Sample Exclusion, Estimating Changes in Global Methylation, and the Contribution of Replicate Lanes. Part II: Integrating Genomic Medicine into the Clinical Practice. Assessing Causal Relationships in Genomics: From Bradford-Hill Criteria to Complex Gene-Environment Interactions and Directed Acyclic Graphs. Genome Wide Association Study to Predict Severe Asthma Exacerbations in Children Using Random Forests Classifiers. Potential Utility of Natural Products as Regulators of Breast Cancer-Associated Aromatase Promoters. Therapeutic Potential of Cladribine in Combination with STAT3 Inhibitor Against Multiple Myeloma. Epigenetic Understanding of Gene-Environment Interactions in Psychiatric Disorders: A New Concept of Clinical Genetics. An Imprinted Rheumatoid Arthritis Methylome Signature Reflects Pathogenic Phenotype. Index.