DMS Distinguished Lecture Series
"Towards establishing a biochemical system to understand maintenance of body pattern"
December 3rd at 5:00 p.m. in Filene Auditorium.
Prior to the lecture, a reception will be held outside of the auditorium beginning at 4:30 p.m.
Dr. Kingston received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from the University of California. He did his postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 1985 Dr. Kingston has served on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and the staff of Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Kingston was promoted to the rank of Professor in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Molecular Biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1995.
Dr. Kingston's major research interests include the functional analysis of chromatin modifying complexes and the characterization of the interaction of transcription factors with nucleosomes.
Dr. Kingston works on the mechanisms that allow a gene to faithfully 'remember' whether it should be on or off throughout the lifetime of an organism. Many master regulatory factors, such as the products of Homeobox (Hox) genes, must be expressed in cells in one portion of the body, and be kept silent in other portions of the body. The expression pattern of Hox genes is established early in embryonic development in an appropriate pattern, and the products of Hox genes help specify body pattern. During early embrogenesis Hox patterns are established by the action of factors that are only transiently expressed. These embryonic patterns are maintained throughout the lifetime of the organism by a different group of proteins that are encoded by the Polycomb-Group (PcG) and Thrithorax-Group (trxG) genes. He studies the action of protein complexes in the PcG and trxG families. Complexes in the trxG and PcG families regulate chromatin structure to maintain an active state (trxG) or a repressed state (PcG). Dr. Kingston studies ATP-dependent nucleosome remodeling complexes encoded by the trxG genes. These complexes use the energy of ATP hydrolysis to alter nucleosome structure in a manner that makes nucleosomal DNA accessible to DNA binding factors. He analyzes the mechanisms by which this occurs and the nature of the remodeled products. He also studies PcG complexes. These complexes repress transcription by creating a chromatin structure that specifically excludes proteins needed for the transcription process. He is characterizing the mechanisms of action of these complexes, the mechanisms that target these complexes to specific genes, and the mechanisms that allow these complexes to maintain association with the template across cell division and therefore faithfully remember the expression state of the gene. He has initiated studies on the overall chromatin organization of the mammalian Hox clusters so that we can integrate these mechanistic studies with regulatory events that occur as mammals develop.