Digital publication of the opening lecture in English by Pr Edith Heard

Edith Heard

Epigenetics and Cellular Memory

How is the information contained in our genes read, memorized and interpreted? What mechanisms control gene expression in an individual or across generations? The understanding of these mechanisms is crucial to knowledge on life forms.

Epigenetics studies the influence of a genome's cellular history on the way in which it is read. Since the sequencing of the complete human genome in the early twenty-first century, epigenetics has also given rise to the hope that we are "more" than the sequencing of our genes. This is probably why there is currently a huge upsurge of interest in this discipline.

Heard E., Epigenetics and Cellular Memory, translation by Liz Libbrecht, Paris, Collège de France, Inaugural Lectures, 2024.

This book was published with the support of the Fondation du Collège de France.

Edith Heard is a geneticist. After her studies in the natural sciences at Cambridge University, she earned a PhD from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London. She is currently Head of the Genetics and Developmental Biology Department, and Group Leader of the "Mammalian Developmental Epigenetics Team", at the Institut Curie. Since 2012 she has been a Professor of the Collège de France, where she holds the Chair of Epigenetics and Cellular Memory.