Principal Investigator Bin Zhang
The structure and dynamics of the genome need to be investigated in the context of its activity to fully appreciate the driving force of genome folding. As is for proteins, the function of the genome is tightly coupled with its structure, i.e., the 3D organization. A prominent example is when a chromosome folds, the loops that form bring enhancers and promoters located far from each other in linear sequence (~ 1 Mb) closer together spatially for gene regulation. At a shorter lengthscale (~10 kb), conformational dynamics of the two forms of chromatins, euchromatin and heterochromatin, can also play a role in gene regulation. We are developing novel theoretical approaches to incorporate genome structure and dynamics into gene network models, and to elucidate the interplay of epigenetic modification and transcription factor regulation in cellular differentiation and fate determination