Speaker: Keji Zhao, PhD 
              Director and Senior Investigator, Systems Biology Center, 
              National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), National Institutes of Health (NIH) 
              Web: https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/research/intramural/researchers/pi/zhao-keji/
 

Time: 1:30-4:00 pm , Oct. 10^th, 2017, Tuesday

Venue: Room 300, SIBS Main Building, Yueyang Road 320

Host: Prof. Gang Wei 
         CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology

Title: CTCF is a critical player in controlling gene expression noise

Abstract:
Recent studies indicate that even a homogeneous population of cells exhibit substantial cell-to-cell variation in gene expression. Our previous single-cell DNase-seq analysis suggests that chromatin states underlie the gene expression heterogeneity across different cells. CTCF is a key protein in chromatin organization in mammalian cells. I will present data to show that the enhancer-promoter interaction mediated by CTCF plays a critical role in controlling gene expression and reducing cell-to-cell variation of expression.

Bio:
Dr. Zhao’s research focuses on the epigenetic regulation of chromatin. Understanding how epigenetic patterns are established during development and how improper epigenetic signals contribute to disease is the long-term goal for his lab. His lab developed the ChIP-SAGE, ChIP-Seq, MNase-Seq, and scDNase-seq techniques and also developed corresponding algorithms to analyze these data. Using these approaches, Dr. Zhao’s lab has been pioneering whole-genome analyses of chromatin modifications in higher eukaryotic systems. By identifying these genome-wide epigenetic patterns, Dr. Zhao’s research has revealed numerous insights into the relationship between the epigenome, chromatin-modifying enzymes, and gene expression.

All are welcome, and anyone who would like to have a talk with speaker, please feel free to contact Jing MU via mujing@picb.ac.cn.