FHS Seminar Series by Dr. Guohong LI

Dr. Guohong Li is currently an Investigator of National Laboratory of Biomacromolecules at Institute of Biophysics of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing, China). Dr. Li received his undergraduate degree from Wuhan University and his Master of Science from Peking University Health Center in 1998 and his Doctor of Philosophy (Dr. Rer. Nat.) degree from Max-Planck Institute for Cell Biology/Heidelberg University in 2003. After he fulfilled his Ph.D., he went on to study the impact of chromatin structures (especially the 30nm chromatin fiber) on RNA Pol II transcription in Danny Reinberg’s lab at HHMI in UMDNJ (then NYU in 2009). He joined the Institute of Biophysics, CAS (Beijing) in 2010 as a CAS Hundred Talents Investigator.

Dr. Li’s group has been mainly focusing on studying the biological functions of higher-order chromatin structures, especially the 30-nm chromatin fiber, in epigenetic regulation of gene expression, as well as the underlying molecular mechanisms. His lab has successfully developed a novel reconstitution system to assemble the 30nm chromatin fiber in vitro and established a research platform to investigate the structural dynamics and in-vitro transcriptional activity upon the reconstituted 30nm chromatin fibers. Using this powerful experimental system, Dr. Li’s group has been performed systematical research works on the structure and function of 30-nm chromatin fiber, the structure and function of centromeric chromatin, and epigenetic regulation of chromatin dynamics during cell fate determination.

Dr. Li has made significant progresses exemplified by the high-resolution structure of 30-nm chromatin fiber, these exciting findings have been published in the top journals (such as Science, Mol Cell, Dev. Cell, G&D, NSMB, eLife etc.) respectively. So far, He has authored or co-authored 50 research articles or reviews in the peer-review journals.