Dr. Irina Maksakova, PhD

 imaksako@bccrc.ca
 http://www.lsi.ubc.ca/labProfile.php?labStaffID=558

  View Publications

Department:	Terry Fox Laboratory (@ the BCCRC since 2002)
Research Role:	Postdoctoral Fellow
Advisor:	Dixie L. Mager
Education:	B.Sc. Honors (Cytology and Genetics), Novosibirsk State University, 2001 PhD (Medical Genetics), University of British Columbia, 2008
Birthplace:	Irkutsk, Russia
Phone:	604-675-8000 ext.7770
Fax:	604-877-0712

Research Interests:

Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are the result of ancient retroviral integrations into the germ line. The full-length variants preserve a typical retroviral structure and are able to retrotranspose. ERVs are a substantial part of most eukaryotic genomes, and there is increasing evidence of their role in evolution, development and gene regulation. My main interest revolves around transcriptional regulation of ERV expression. Elevation in ERV transcription is commonly associated with human germ cell tumours, leukemias, lymphomas, breast and colon cancers. ERVs carry an array of transcription regulatory signals, and in mice, many cases of aberrant expression of oncogenes due to an upstream ERV integration have been reported. Human ERVs do not retrotranspose in the germ line in modern days, whereas in mice, novel ERV integrations are a frequent cause of germ line mutations. The reasons underlying high germ line transcription and retrotransposition of ERVs in the mouse and their silenced state in human are still unclear and require further investigation. Both mouse and human ERVs are normally under suppression in differentiated embryonic and adult tissues by means of DNA methylation, and it has been shown that global demethylation frequently occurring in cancer leads to increased ERV transcription which may further deregulate the genome. My research is dedicated to the mechanisms of ERV regulation in the mouse, focusing on the influence of transcription factors and epigenetic modifications. This study may help elucidate the factors that have evolved to control the detrimental activity of ERVs.

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