Chromatin and Epigenetics

Registration Fees (include access to all of the talks, digital poster sessions and online group discussions, and help us cover our costs to run the event.) 
For further information please refer to the FAQ page):

Accredited journalists may be eligible to register for a reduced press rate or in some cases for complimentary registration. Registrants may be required to provide accreditation or equivalent proof of press membership after registration. Please contact Tim Nürnberger for more information.

Confirmation and Payment

Registration will be on a first-come first-served basis. Your place can only be confirmed after payment of the registration fee.
Types of payments accepted are international bank transfers (only up to 8 weeks before event) and credit card payments.

Abstract submission

Only registered participants are eligible to submit an abstract. We only accept online abstract submissions. 

After registration you can submit your abstract via a separate link that will be provided in the email confirmation. Alternatively, you can access the link on the confirmation page directly after registering. The same login credentials are used for both processes.

Please note:

Title: The title should not exceed 20 words. Only the first word of the title should start with a capital letter and the rest of the title should be in lowercase.

Authors and Affiliations: Please fill in the author’s details as requested in the online form. The compulsory details are: First Name, Last Name, Organisation Name (Affiliation or Company), Country and Email. Mark only one author as the role of First author and please don’t forget to indicate who will be presenting. The order of the authors will be listed as follows: First Author, Co-First Author (alphabetically if multiple), co-author(s) (in the order added by the submitter).

Presentation Types: When submitting your abstract, you can apply for an oral or digital poster presentation. A selection process will take place with the results announced 2-3 weeks after the abstract submission deadline.

Please check our FAQs pages for further information on how to submit an abstract.

Financial Assistance

Registration Fee Waivers

All academic and student registrants are invited to apply for a registration fee waiver, provided by the EMBL Advanced Training Centre Corporate Partnership Programme. The registration fee waiver covers the registration sum that you have paid to attend the meeting. Conference participants are not required to pre-pay the registration fee to be selected for a fee waiver for a virtual meeting. If you have already paid the registration fee and are awarded a fee waiver, it will be reimbursed after the meeting. Course participants are required to pay the course fee in advance, which will then be reimbursed after the course to the fee waiver recipients.

Childcare Grants

For participants with children, there is the possibility to apply for a childcare grant provided by the EMBL Advanced Training Centre Corporate Partnership Programme, to offset childcare costs incurred by participants or speakers when participating at a virtual event. Eligible costs include fees for a babysitter or childcare facility or travel costs for a care giver. Please note that priority will be given to early stage researchers. A maximum amount of 500 EUR can be awarded per participant selected for the virtual childcare grant. Costs will be reimbursed after the meeting only once a reimbursement form and original receipts have been received. In order to apply for this grant, you must be registered by the abstract submission deadline.

Application

Applications for financial assistance can be submitted via the submission portal* (for the submission of abstracts for conferences or the submission of motivation letters for courses) by completing the Financial Assistance Application Section (underneath the section for entering abstract/motivation letter information). The link to the portal can be found in the registration confirmation email that you will receive after registering for the conference or course.

For conferences, if you are not submitting an abstract, you can still apply for financial assistance in the submission portal by following the instructions here. Note that priority will be given to those submitting an abstract to present at the conference. In your application you will be asked to answer questions regarding your motivation for applying, and, for registration fee waivers, the reasons why your lab cannot fund your attendance and how your attendance will make a difference to your career. Application for financial support will not affect the outcome of your registration application.

*For some events, applications for Childcare Grants will still be done by email. Information about the grant will be sent out shortly after the abstract/motivation letter deadline. Please contact the event Conference Officer if you have any questions.

Selection

The scientific organisers will select the recipients of registration fee waivers during the abstract selection process for conferences and the participant selection process for courses. Results will be announced approximately 3 – 4 weeks before the event start date. Selection results do not impact your admission to the meeting. Registration fee waiver selection is based on your current work or study location, your motivation for applying, the reasons for needing financial support and the impact this event will have on your career. Childcare grants are allocated based on career stage, with priority given to early stage researchers.

Further details

A list of external funding opportunities can be found here, and information on attending a conference as an event reporter here.

For further information about financial assistance please refer to the FAQ page.

Guidelines

Please do:

• Use the event-specific hashtag as communicated during the event for any related tweets
• Tweet unless the speaker specifically says otherwise
• Be mindful of unpublished data
• Be respectful in tone and content

Please don’t:

• Share Slack, live stream or poster session links with others
• Broadcast the conference to unregistered participants
• Capture, transmit or redistribute data presented at the meeting unless presenter gives explicit consent
• Use offensive language in your posts
• Engage in rudeness or personal attacks

Additional information can be found in our Code of Conduct.

Health and well-being

It is important to stay healthy and move around, especially when you are attending an event virtually. We have put together a few coffee break stretches and yoga videos. You can find these under ‘resources’ on the conference platform.

How to ask questions

Please use the Q&A function. It is possible to send a direct message to participants, poster presenters, and speakers within the conference platform.

If you have any other questions, you can go to the Help Desk on the conference platform. Click on ‘more’ on the top menu and click Help Desk. 

Time zone

The programme is planned based on Central European Time (CET) or Central European Summer Time (CEST) unless otherwise stated. As many virtual participants are attending from around the world, we do our best to accommodate as many timezones as possible when creating the programme. Please take your time zone into consideration when planning your attendance. Remember to set your time zone in your account. 

Virtual event platforms

We are using a virtual event platform for this conference. More information about the platform will be shared ahead of the conference.

Zoom: The virtual event platform will use Zoom for live sessions and we recommend you download the Zoom app in advance of the conference to ensure you get full interactivity.

Simultaneous profiling of the epigenome and transcriptome at a single cell level

Hannes Arnold, Senior Science and Technology Advisor, 10x Genomics

Deep insights into tumor biology, developmental biology, and other biological processes and disease states require a comprehensive view of gene expression patterns and their corresponding epigenetic regulation at single cell resolution. Leverage two modalities at once in single cells to more deeply characterize complex cell populations and capture cellular heterogeneity, and discover gene regulatory interactions driving cell differentiation, development, and disease. Join our workshop to explore how you can multiply your power of discovery with Chromium Single Cell Multiome ATAC + Gene Expression, our first commercial product enabling you to simultaneously profile RNA-seq and ATAC-seq from the same single cells.

Mapping etiologic cell types for obesity using single-nucleus gene expression and chromatin profiling

Tune H Pers, Associate Professor, Novo Nordisk Foundation, Center for Basic Metabolic Research, Denmark

We and others have previously leveraged large-scale bulk transcriptomics data to interpret genome-wide association study results. In this presentation I will describe how we can use single-nucleus gene expression and chromatin accessibility data to identify candidate brain cell types underlying obesity and other complex traits. I am going to focus on our recent work in which we showed that transcripts and regions of accessible chromatin near obesity-associated genetic variants are enriched in the area postrema and the nucleus of the solitary tract neurons that express the glucagon-like peptide 1 and/or calcitonin receptors – two actively pursued anti-obesity drug targets.

Catch Them All: Leveraging Capture Hi-C to Characterize Chromatin Landscapes

Overview

It’s easy to get lost in the wide range of chromatin conformation techniques today. Arima HiC+ for Capture Hi-C technology enables researchers to tailor their conformation studies to specific regions of interest. Much like whole genome sequencing versus targeted approaches, the Arima Promoter Capture panel is the gene regulation analog to exome capture, covering promoters genome-wide at a significantly higher resolution and with fewer reads.

What will you learn?

1. Learn about the latest development in chromatin conformation capture. Specifically, we will introduce you to capture Hi-C, including region, promoter & variant capture.

2. How are researchers using capture Hi-C today, and what discoveries have they made? Learn how capture Hi-C can help you:

1. Understand gene regulatory mechanisms by assigning distal regulatory elements to promoter regions across the genome
2. Characterize regulatory differences between samples by assessing genome-wide promoter contacts
3. Identify novel therapeutic, diagnostic or prognostic markers by linking human disease-associated variants to their target genes

3. Deep dive into promoter capture. Learn how your lab can start using capture Hi-C.

Who should attend?

This webinar is for epigenetics researchers interested in applying the latest techniques in 3D genomics. Whether you’re working on translational applications or discovery research, there are many new developments in the chromatin conformation space that can take your research to new levels. Come learn about the latest development in capture Hi-C in this webinar from Arima Genomics.  

MCM complexes are barriers that restrict cohesin-mediated loop extrusion

Bart Dequeker, Kikuë Tachibana Lab, Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA)

Eukaryotic genomes are compacted into loops and topologically associating domains (TADs), which contribute to transcription, recombination and genomic stability. Cohesin extrudes DNA into loops that are thought to lengthen until CTCF boundaries are encountered. Little is known about whether loop extrusion is impeded by DNA-bound macromolecular machines. We demonstrate that the replicative helicase MCM is a barrier that restricts loop extrusion in G1 phase. Single-nucleus Hi-C of one-cell embryos revealed that MCM loading reduces CTCF-anchored loops and decreases TAD boundary insulation, suggesting loop extrusion is impeded before reaching CTCF. Single-molecule imaging shows that MCMs are physical barriers that frequently constrain cohesin translocation in vitro. Simulations are consistent with MCMs as abundant, random barriers. We conclude that distinct loop extrusion barriers contribute to shaping 3D genomes.