Dr Sylvain Foret

The Australian National University

Sylvain did his undergraduate in Montpellier and Paris (France), where he studied invertebrate physiology and computer science. He obtained his PhD in 2007 from the Australian National University, working on genomics in the honeybee and in other insects such as beetles and wasps. From 2007 to 2009 he worked at the Mathematical Sciences Institute (ANU) investigating computational and statistical aspects of biological sequences comparison methods. He was then recruited to the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral reef studies at James Cook University (2009-2011), where he worked on the transcriptomes, genomes and epigenomes of various invertebrates, with a particular focus on corals and other cnidarians. In 2012, Sylvain started his group at the ANU, where his current research includes examining the mechanisms of epigenetic regulation in the honeybee and in corals, as well as comparative genomics in various invertebrates.

Evolution of DNA Methylation

Epigenetic regulations are fundamental to the development and health of plants and animals. For instance DNA methylation in mammals is required for normal embryonic development and has been involved in number of diseases such as cancer and diabetes. However, different animal species have widely different DNA methylation landscapes.