Mechanism of epigenetic silencing by the HUSH complex
Leonid Yurkovetskiy | Luban Lab | Charles A. King Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship
This project has led to my interest in studying the co evolution of how newly integrated proviruses are incorporated into cellular programming and in turn how these provirus shape the cellular response. The HUSH complex bridges exogenous retroviruses and endogenous retroelements and may contribute to driving evolutionary adaptation of genetic networks. By gaining a better understanding of how exogenous retroviruses are able to escape transcriptional control evolved to repress and limit the damage caused by parasitic genetic elements we can gain deep knowledge about the evolutionary pressures driving our evolution. Retroelements make up over 50% of our genome and the rules of how they are regulated by the genome and how they antagonize each other in a arms race will unravel many new discoveries about how we evolved and came to be. The major differences between us and our nearest relatives are not the coding sequences of proteins but the gene regulation of those proteins which may in part be driven by the need to regulate species specific transposable elements. By gaining a better understanding of how the HUSH complex recognizes and makes decisions as to what elements to repress it will unravel new interesting biology.
