Chromatin science from the researchers doing it.
Epigenetics Podcast pairs technical research conversations with personal scientific origin stories. The show moves from cryo-EM, Polycomb, ChIP, genome organization, and pluripotency into the experiments, tools, and career turns behind epigenetics work.
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Epigenetics Podcast is a specialist interview series from Active Motif about the science behind chromatin, transcription, genome regulation, and epigenetic inheritance. It is built around conversations with researchers whose work sits close to the experimental core of modern molecular biology. The structure is steady. A guest is introduced through their research area, institutional context, and scientific path, then the conversation turns toward origin stories, lab decisions, papers, tools, and open questions. The result is not a simplified biology explainer. It is closer to listening in on a careful scientific debrief, where the important details include which assay worked, which complex was difficult to isolate, which factor moved to new sites, and which dataset changed the direction of a project. Episodes range across cryo-EM studies of TFIID and PRC2, Polycomb and three-dimensional genome organization, placeholder nucleosomes and zygotic genome activation, ChIP and ENCODE, germ cell development, histone demethylases, pluripotency, and X-chromosome inactivation. The show gives methods real weight. Cryo-electron microscopy, functional genomics, genome engineering, quantitative analysis, DNA methylation analysis, ChIP-seq, reporter loci, and sequencing technologies are treated as part of the story rather than background machinery. That makes the conversations dense, but also useful. Guests often explain how research programs emerged from technical limitations, collaborations, surprising data, or a willingness to follow a question into unfamiliar territory. The human side is present too. Several episodes begin with formative teachers, childhood curiosity, early lab experiences, or the uneasy choice between possible scientific paths. Those moments give shape to the technical material without softening it into biography alone. The show suits listeners who already speak some molecular biology and want to hear how working scientists connect mechanism, evidence, and career history. Its value is in the combination: precise epigenetics research discussed through the lived process of doing science.
Made for: Best for molecular biologists, epigenetics researchers, graduate students, and scientifically fluent listeners who want detailed conversations about methods, mechanisms, and research careers.
What sets it apart: The show combines high-level epigenetics topics with granular discussion of experimental choices, technical constraints, and the personal routes researchers took into their fields.
Discover the stories behind the science!
Stefan Dillinger gets you from career origin stories to streptavidin-coated beads without lowering the microscope.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A measured, lab-grounded review of chromatin systems, cellular memory, and how inherited repression can be tested.
Chromatin regulation and epigenetic inheritance shape this episode's account of how cells keep their identity as they divide. Oliver Bell walks through chromatin-based cellular memory, with particular attention to gene silencing and the feedback between histone methylation and…
A focused look at how bioinformatics, mouse studies, and collaborative questions push epigenetics research forward.
Gene regulation lands here as a research path shaped by questions that do not stay on the page. Dr. Patrick Murphy of Cornell University traces how postdoctoral work in bioinformatics carried him from DNA methylation and ChIP-seq analysis into collaboration with the Utah Center…
Science education between theory and classroom reality.
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Michaela Frye discusses how RNA modifications and RNA binding proteins regulate gene expression post-transcriptionally, linking dysregulation to cancer and cellular plasticity.
Oliver Bell connects Drosophila H3K36 polarity, HP1 tethering at OCT4, and Polycomb 3D genome contacts into one episode about epigenetic memory.
Patrick Murphy, an associate professor at Cornell University, spends much of the episode on placeholder nucleosomes, H2AZ, and how embryonic chromatin is reprogrammed before zygotic genome activation.
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Professor Peggy Farnham of USC describes how her laboratory adapted chromatin immunoprecipitation, or ChIP, from yeast and Drosophila to mammalian cells using mouse lines carrying up to 500 copies of the DHFR gene.
Wang describes 'cellular amnesia': shutting off mitochondria erases histone acetylation so myoblasts forget proliferation and differentiate.
Mitinori Saitou discusses his career and research on epigenetic mechanisms in mammalian germ cell development.
Johnathan Whetstine discusses his journey into science, from a high school biology teacher's influence to his research on histone demethylases and cancer cell stability.
Christa Buecker discusses her path to becoming a stem cell researcher, from growing up on a farm to being inspired by teachers.
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Lothar Schermelleh discusses his career path and research in advanced optical imaging for studying 3D nuclear organisation.