日　時： 2024年3月21日（木） 16:00～17:00

場　所： 生命科学総合研究棟B棟301室

講　師： Prof. 黃韻如 (Ruby HUANG, Yun Ju)

School of Medicine, College of Medicine,National Taiwan University (NTU)

演　題：

Heterogeneity and plasticity of epithelial-mesenchymal cell fates

要　旨：

Determining cell fate is a dynamic process. Plasticity is achieved via reprogramming in multiple directions to result in cellular heterogeneity of multiple intermediate states. This echoes the concept that cell fate determination occurs along a plasticity spectrum. To achieve plasticity and fluidity for cell fate determination, these reprogramming processes require to systemically overcome various thresholds, through the manipulation of different gatekeepers to regulate genomic architecture, epigenetic modifications, transcription, and translation, post-translational modifications, and other mechanisms. Along this cell fate spectrum, the heterogeneity between cell states will also be greatly affected by the tissue environment. Therefore, when exploring the functionality of different cell states, the context-specific consideration of tissue microenvironment (TME) is also required to better describe the complete picture of this plasticity spectrum.
Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is one important process of cell fate determination. Understanding the fluidity of the interchange among different EM states will facilitate our understandings of how cells slide along the plasticity spectrum of EMT. To achieve this, my group has focused on the research scheme of EMPreSS (Epithelial Mesenchymal Precision Spectrum Scoring) to explore the switches at the transcription, epigenome,
and kinome levels. In this talk, I will introduce how a epithelial gatekeeping pioneer factor GRHL2 shapes the transcriptional and epigenomic landscapes along the EM plasticity spectrum and how the genome architecture is organized between EM cell fates. I will also introduce how the EM cell heterogeneity and the TME are interacted in tumors revealed by spatial transcriptomics profiling.

幹　事︓ゲノム情報解析研究分野
共　催︓東京大学定量生命科学研究所