Prof. Weiqun Peng (彭卫群)

Department of Physics, The George Washington University, USA

Email: wpeng@gwu.edu

Abstract: Eukaryotic genomes are organized into chromatin, with nucleosome as the fundamental unit. As the substrate for all transactions involving DNA, chromatin plays a critical role in gene regulation and development. Chromatin structure and function are modulated by a myriad of post-translational modifications on the histone tails of nucleosomes. As a major component of the epigenome, these chemical modifications are able to encode a huge amount of information and serve as the carrier of dynamical cellular memory. Nature has developed intricate systems to read and write this information. Thanks to recent advances in the next generation sequencing technology, the genomic landscapes of modified histones in higher eukaryotes have become available using chromatin immunoprecipitation followed with high-throughput sequencing (ChIP-Seq). These landscapes, however, turn out to be rather noisy and diffuse. I will discuss methods we developed for sensitive and efficient identification of signals and domain structures in the epigenomic landscape. In addition, I will present biological examples of important and unique information about gene regulation provided by these high-throughput functional genomics and epigenomics data.

About the speaker:

Prof. Weiqun Peng received Ph. D in Theoretical Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2001, and his B.S. and M.S. in Physics from Peking University. He was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, University of California (San Diego), for the year 2001-2004 and joined George Washington University (GWU) in fall 2004. Prof. Weiqun Peng is now an Associate Professor with tenure in Department of Physics at George Washington University. His research field is Computational Biology and Statistical Biophysics.

DateTime: July 12, 2012 (Thursday), 14:30 – 15:30
Location: 606 Conference Room