FHS Seminar Series by Prof. Bing ZHU

Bing Zhu, Ph.D., Investigator, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, is interested in the establishment and

maintenance of epigenetic modifications. Dr. Zhu received his Bachelor degree in Zhejiang University (1992), Ph.D. in Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (1999). He then received his postdoc training in Friedrich Miescher Institute, Switzerland (1999-2002) and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, USA (2002-2006). Dr. Zhu established his own research lab in the National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijing in 2006 and joined the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Science in 2014. He is also an International Early Career Scientist of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and an editorial board member of J. Biol. Chem.

DNA is unarguably the carrier of genetic information. However, DNA sequence alone cannot explain how hundreds of cell types in a complex multi-cellular organism, such as a human individual can possess distinct transcription programs, while sharing the same genetic information. This is believed to be achieved by fine-tuning our genetic information with a so-called “epigenetic” system. To fulfill the two basic tasks challenging the multi-cellular organisms, epigenetic system must simultaneously offer dual characteristics, “Plasticity & Inheritability”. Plasticity allows the transformation of one genome into hundreds of epigenomes and transcriptomes, whereas inheritability permits the maintenance of every single epigenome and its corresponding transcriptome.

We are interested in several dimensions of the epigenetic system. Primarily, we would like to understand how epigenetic information is inherited during mitotic divisions and how epigenetic information is established during germ cell maturation and stem cell differentiation. This seminar will highlight some of our recent progresses along these directions.