| Talk title | Biochemical and functional dissection of epigenetic protein complexes |
| Speaker | Prof. Zhonghua GAO Assistant Professor, Penn State University College of Medicine |
| Date & Time | 12 April 2017 (Wednesday) 10:00-11:00 |
| Venue | Room G004, E12 Building (University of Macau) |
| Abstract | One of the fundamental questions in biology is to understanding the cell fate determination in multicellular organisms, which has tremendous impact on stem cell-based regenerative medicine. In addition to genetic pathways, epigenetic programs are greatly involved in the lineage specification during embryonic development of vertebrates. As an important advance, we recently characterized an epigenetic network constituted by a large family of complexes formed by Polycomb group (PcG) proteins. PcG proteins form two major groups of Polycomb repressive complexes (PRCs), PRC1 and PRC2. Both PRC1 and PRC2 are generally involved in stem cell self-renewal and differentiation, and their deregulation often leads to diseases, including cancer. However, mammal components of the PRC1 complexes are far more diverse, and are considerably much less understood. Through a combination of approaches with biochemistry, molecular and cellular biology, genetics, and genomics, our goal is to dissect the roles of mammalian PRC1 complexes in cell identity determination. These efforts will likely provide insights to advance future practice in stem-cell based regenerative therapy, as well as improve treatment for diseases such as cancer.
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