The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Kenneth Zaret, Ph.D., Joseph Leidy Professor, department of cell and developmental biology, director, Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

Speaker bio(s)

Cell fate changes involve dramatic and discrete switches in gene expression programs. Such changes are initiated by pioneer transcription factors, which can access nucleosomal DNA in silent chromatin that is unmarked for activation or repression. Dr. Zaret will discuss how a segment of the FoxA1 pioneer factor helps open such chromatin. Yet there remain heterochromatic regions of the genome that are difficult for nearly all regulatory factors to access, and which harbor genes required for terminal differentiation. Dr. Zaret will discuss his laboratory’s discovery of diverse proteins that are embedded in heterochromatin, to understand how heterochromatin barriers can be overcome in a specific fashion and promote high-fidelity cell fate changes. They find that marked dynamics in heterochromatin occur during organogenesis, which may focus regulatory factor access to the genome during the period of rapid differentiation and growth.

Dr. Zaret is interested in understanding how different cell types are specified in embryos, regenerating tissues, stem cells, and cancer. He focuses on signaling, transcription factors, and chromatin structures that elicit liver and pancreatic beta cell development and cell fate interconversion.

Dr. Zaret received his B.A. in biology from the University of Rochester and his Ph.D. in biophysics and genetics from the University of Rochester Medical School, where he was in Dr. Fred Sherman’s laboratory. He was a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, in Dr. Keith Yamamoto’s laboratory. Before joining the University of Pennsylvania in 2000, Dr. Zaret was on the faculty of Brown University Medical School from 1986 to 1999. He was also a senior member of the Cell and Developmental Biology Program at the Fox Chase Cancer Center from 1999 to 2009. He has received numerous honors for his work, including the Searle Scholars Award, the Hans Popper Basic Science Award from the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the American Liver Foundation, and the MERIT Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Dr. Zaret is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Open to

Public

Host

David Allis, Ph.D.

Reception

Refreshments, 3:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m., Abby Lounge

Contact

Justin Sloboda

Phone

(212) 327-7785

Sponsor

Justin Sloboda
(212) 327-7785
jsloboda@rockefeller.edu

Readings

http://librarynews.rockefeller.edu/?p=4574