The Genome Remembers: Beyond the Genetic Code

G. Burroughs Mider Lecture | Wednesday, September 16, 2026 | 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. ET

Dr. Grewal is a Distinguished Investigator and Chief of the Laboratory of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). His research has defined fundamental mechanisms of heterochromatin formation and epigenetic inheritance, processes essential for genome stability, gene regulation, and development and whose disruption contributes to cancer and other diseases.

After earning his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1992 as a Cambridge–Nehru Scholar, Dr. Grewal joined the NCI as a postdoctoral fellow, where his studies provided early evidence that chromatin states can serve as heritable units of information. In 1998, he joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where his group discovered the conserved link between RNA interference and heterochromatin assembly, work recognized by Science as part of the 2002 Breakthrough of the Year.

Since returning to NCI in 2003, Dr. Grewal’s laboratory has advanced understanding of how heterochromatin is established, maintained, and regulated in response to developmental and environmental cues. His work has had a lasting impact on chromatin biology and epigenetics, with several discoveries recognized as landmark advances in gene expression research.

Summary

The central theme of the lecture is that inheritance extends beyond the DNA sequence itself. While DNA provides the genetic blueprint, the speaker’s work has demonstrated that cells also inherit epigenetic information carried by chromatin. Chromatin biology and epigenetics are fundamental areas of molecular biology with far-reaching implications for human health and disease. Aberrant chromatin regulation is now recognized as a hallmark of numerous diseases, particularly cancer. When the mechanisms governing the epigenetic inheritance of heterochromatin—a repressive form of chromatin—break down, inappropriate gene expression, genomic instability, and cellular transformation can result. Importantly, a deeper understanding of these processes has opened new avenues for therapeutic intervention, with many cancer treatments now targeting chromatin-modifying enzymes and other epigenetic regulators.

The lecture will describe how these discoveries have reshaped our understanding of how the genome “remembers” patterns of gene regulation without altering the underlying DNA sequence. It will also examine why these mechanisms are essential for maintaining diverse genome functions and how their disruption contributes to disease. More broadly, the lecture will illustrate how fundamental research in chromatin biology and epigenetics has generated important insights into the mechanisms of inheritance, genome regulation, and disease, while also creating new opportunities for therapeutic development.

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