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SUMMARY:Towards a quantitative understanding of long-range transcriptional
  regulation - Dr Luca Giorgetti\; Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedi
 cal Research
DTSTART:20220927T123000Z
DTEND:20220927T133000Z
UID:TALK176483@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Bobbie Claxton
DESCRIPTION:In mammals\, the control of gene expression relies on tens of 
 thousands of enhancer sequences that are differentially active in every ce
 ll type. Enhancers engage with target promoters often from large genomic d
 istances and govern their spatio-temporal and quantitative expression dyna
 mics. Genetic variation within these noncoding regions is a major driver o
 f evolution\, but is also causal to developmental disorders and numerous h
 uman diseases. Despite their central role in gene regulation in health and
  disease\, however\, the principles by which enhancers select and control 
 their target genes remain largely unknown. What are the molecular mechanis
 ms that transmit regulatory information from an enhancer to a promoter?  H
 ow are they related to chromosome structure and physical interactions betw
 een enhancers and promoters?  Are these mechanisms universal or rather dep
 end on locus- and tissue-specific contexts? My group addresses these funda
 mental questions at the interface of molecular biology and biophysics usin
 g a tight interplay of experimental and theoretical approaches. In my talk
 \, I will present how using a combination of genomic engineering\, physica
 l modeling and live-cell imaging we recently discovered that a promoter’
 s transcription level are a nonlinear function its contact probabilities w
 ith a cognate enhancer\, and how this could arise from dynamic and unstabl
 e physical interactions between enhancers and promoters.\n\nAfter studying
  physics\, Luca obtained his PhD in Gioacchino Natoli’s lab at the Europ
 ean Institute of Oncology in Milan working on the molecular mechanisms und
 erlying the inflammatory transcriptional response. He then moved to Paris 
 for a postdoc with Edith Heard at the Curie Institute. There he participat
 ed to the discovery and characterization of topologically associating doma
 ins (TADs)\, and described the three-dimensional conformation of the inact
 ive X chromosome. Luca has been a group leader at the Friedrich Miescher I
 nstitute for Biomedical Research (FMI) in Basel since 2015. His group uses
  approaches at the interface between molecular biology and physics to unde
 rstand the mechanisms by which chromosome structure and dynamics control t
 ranscriptional regulation by enhancers. He is the recipient of an ERC Star
 ting Grant and an EMBO Young Investigator.\n\nClick here to join live - ht
 tps://us06web.zoom.us/j/81590547636
LOCATION:Online via zoom &amp\; Kings Hedges Room 
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