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Join Professor G.V. Shivashankar from ETH Zurich for a Force Talk entitled 'Mechano-Genomics: from Cell-State Transitions to Chromatin Biomarkers.'
Abstract:
Recent studies have shown that extracellular mechano-chemical signals regulate gene expression programs and cell-state transitions, although the underlying mechanisms are still unclear. In this talk, I will first highlight the tight coupling between cell geometry/mechanics, 3D chromosome organization, and gene expression. I will then discuss how sustained mechanical signals, through cell-geometric confinement, can induce cell-state transitions and provide avenues to rejuvenate aging cells. Furthermore, I will show that spatio-temporal alterations in chromatin organization, identified using fluorescence imaging combined with machine learning, can serve as robust biomarkers for cell-state transitions. Collectively, our results may have important applications in regenerative medicine and early disease diagnostics.
Speaker:
G.V.Shivashankar is currently a Full Professor of Mechano-Genomics at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich. He also heads the Laboratory of Nanoscale Biology at the Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland. He carried out his PhD at the Rockefeller University (1994-1999) and Postdoctoral research at NEC Research Institute, Princeton USA (1999-2000). He was a tenured faculty at the National Center for Biological Sciences, NCBS-TIFR- Bangalore, India (2000-2009) before relocating to the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2010. He was the Deputy Director of the Mechanobiology Institute at NUS (2011-2019) and was the IFOM-NUS Chair Professor (2014-2019) before joining ETH. His scientific awards include the Birla Science Prize in 2006, the Swarnajayanthi Fellowship in 2007, and he was elected to the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2010 and to the EMBO membership in 2019.
How to join:
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At this event
Professor of Biophysics