ESAM Graduate Student Nir Yungster Wins PSOC Poster Award

Congratulations Nir Yungster, an NU-PSOC trainee, who is one of six recipients of the PSOC Poster Award at the Scottsdale, Arizona PSOC Investigators Meeting. There was a record number of trainee poster presentations.

In his words:

"I presented work on a mathematical model that describes the dynamics of histone modifications in cancer cells.  Histones are proteins that act as spools, allowing DNA to coil into a more compact form.  Through a number of mechanisms, these proteins can significantly impact gene expression in a manner dependent on chemical modifications made to them.  Cancers such as B-cell lymphoma and multiple myeloma have both been linked to proteins that modify these histones, and thus understanding the dynamics of this system can provide important insight into possible treatments for patients.  Our model uses experimental data to quantify the rates at which modifications occur in cancer cells, and allows for dependence on the current modified state of the histone.  While thus far we have only modeled a small subset of possible histone modifications, our model can be robustly extended to include a larger number of modifications in order to provide a fuller picture of histone modification kinetics.  Additionally, by comparing the histone kinetics in cancer cells to the kinetics in normal ones, we hope to use our model to predict treatments that could promote transitions of cancer cells to their non-cancerous forms."