The International Human Epigenome Consortium (IHEC) is a scientific organization, founded in 2010, that helps to coordinate global efforts in the field of

Epigenomics Epigenomics is the study of the complete set of epigenetic modifications on the genetic material of a cell, known as the epigenome. The field is analogous to genomics and proteomics, which are the study of the genome and proteome of a cell. Epigen ...

. The initial goal was to generate at least 1,000 reference (baseline) human epigenomes from different types of normal and disease-related human

cell types A cell type is a classification used to identify cells that share morphological or phenotypical features. A multicellular organism may contain cells of a number of widely differing and specialized cell types, such as muscle cells and skin cells, ...

Structure and funding

IHEC’s operations are funded by its full members (national and regional scientific funding agencies), and staffed largely on a volunteer basis by scientists and other experts from participating funding agencies and epigenome mapping projects.

Current IHEC Member Countries

Canadian Institutes for Health Research The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR; french: Instituts de recherche en santé du Canada; IRSC) is a federal agency responsible for funding health and medical research in Canada. Comprising 13 institutes, it is the successor to the M ...

(Canada) *

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...

(EU) * Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Project Management Agency within the

German Aerospace Centre The German Aerospace Center (german: Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V., abbreviated DLR, literally ''German Center for Air- and Space-flight'') is the national center for aerospace, energy and transportation research of Germany ...

(Germany) *

Genome Institute of Singapore The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) is a statutory board under the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Singapore. The agency supports R&D that is aligned to areas of competitive advantage and national needs for Singapore. ...

(Singapore) * Hong Kong Epigenomics Project (Hong Kong) *

Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development The Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED; ja, 日本医療研究開発機構), created in April 2015, is an independent Japanese medical research and development organization, overseen by the Office of Healthcare Policy of Cab ...

(Japan) *

National Institute of Health (South Korea) The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

: Roadmap Epigenomics Program and Encyclopedia of DNA Elements ( ENCODE) project (USA) In addition, countries and agencies supportive of IHEC goals are organizations that have not yet made a full financial contribution to the project, but whose members provide time and expertise:Eurice GmbH
"IHEC Members · IHEC"
. *

European Institute of Oncology The European Institute of Oncology ( it, Istituto Europeo di Oncologia, IEO) is a non-profit private-law comprehensive cancer centre located in Milan, Italy. It is a clinic, a research centre and a training institution. IEO is a member of EU-LIFE ...

, FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology Foundation, Italian Institute of Technology, Centre for Genomic Science (Italy) * National Agency of Research (France) * National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia) * UK Funders Alliance: Medical Research Council,

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, is a non-departmental public body (NDPB), and is the largest UK public funder of non-medical bioscience. It predominantly funds scientific rese ...

, Cancer Research UK, and

Wellcome Trust The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of one of the predecessors of Glaxo ...

(UK) Oversight of IHEC is provided by an Executive Committee, whose members are nominated by Full Member organizations. This committee works closely with an International Scientific Steering Committee, whose members are the scientific leaders of participating projects and other leaders in the field of epigenetics, as well as a Data Coordination Center. Additional expertise is contributed by workgroups composed of members of participating research projects. IHEC interacts and coordinates its efforts with other large-scale international genomics projects, such as the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), ENCODE.,Eurice GmbH
"Objectives"
and the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health. Committee and workgroup members, as well as other individuals involved in IHEC, meet annually at an event hosted by member countries on a rotating basis. Most meetings are hosted in conjunction with a scientific symposium, some of which are open to non-IHEC scientists and sometimes members of the public.

Goals

The ultimate objective of IHEC is to determine how the Epigenome has shaped human populations over generations and in response to the environment. The first phase of IHEC’s operations involves coordinating the production of at least 1,000 reference epigenomes from healthy and diseased human cells, as well as a limited number of

model organism A model organism (often shortened to model) is a non-human species that is extensively studied to understand particular biological phenomena, with the expectation that discoveries made in the model organism will provide insight into the workin ...

s relevant to specific human diseases. The initial focus is on cellular states including stemness, immortality,

proliferation Proliferation may refer to: Weapons *Nuclear proliferation, the spread of nuclear weapons, material, and technology *Chemical weapon proliferation, the spread of chemical weapons, material, and technology * Small arms proliferation, the spread of ...

, differentiation, senescence, and stress. The reference epigenome for each sample comprises high resolution maps of

DNA methylation DNA methylation is a biological process by which methyl groups are added to the DNA molecule. Methylation can change the activity of a DNA segment without changing the sequence. When located in a gene promoter, DNA methylation typically acts t ...

and key regulatory

histone In biology, histones are highly basic proteins abundant in lysine and arginine residues that are found in eukaryotic cell nuclei. They act as spools around which DNA winds to create structural units called nucleosomes. Nucleosomes in turn are wr ...

modifications, with corresponding information about the type and expression level of all transcribed genes (

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, respo ...

coding as well as

non-coding Non-coding DNA (ncDNA) sequences are components of an organism's DNA that do not encode protein sequences. Some non-coding DNA is transcribed into functional non-coding RNA molecules (e.g. transfer RNA, microRNA, piRNA, ribosomal RNA, and regula ...

/ small RNAs). The data produced are made freely available to the research community via the IHEC Data Portal,

European Genome-phenome Archive European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA) is a repository for human biomolecular and phenotypic data in the United Kingdom and Spain. It involves the secure storage of all potentially identifiable genetic data, phenotypic and clinical data generate ...

(EGA), and other venues.Eurice GmbH
"About IHEC"
In addition, participating research projects are engaged in developing new epigenomics and associated

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combi ...

methods. In November 2016 IHEC members from Canada, the European Union's BLUEPRINT Consortium, the German Epigenome Program “DEEP”, Japan, Singapore, and the United States published a group of 41 coordinated papers in '' Cell Press'' and other journals. The papers included descriptions of molecular biology and computational methods as well as new research on normal and disease biology.

References

"Integrative functional genomics identifies an enhancer looping to the SOX9 gene disrupted by the 17q24.3 prostate cancer risk locus"
{{reflist Epigenetics Genome projects

Structure and funding

Current IHEC Member Countries

Goals

See also

References