Lectures and seminars Guest seminar - Dr. David Levens, National Institutes of Health
Title: Using the Far Upstream Element Binding Protein to control MYC and DNA topology.
Welcome to guest seminar by Dr. David Levens from Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, NIH, US
Date: July 9th
Time: 10am
Place: Ragnar Granit, Biomedicum
Dr. Levens studies fundamental mechanisms of gene regulation, emphasizing the control of MYC function and expression. He and his team showed that MYC is a univesal amplifier of gene expression. This explains much of MYC physiology and pathology, but also defines the needs to control MYC levels precisely in real time. The Levens Lab has shown that torque generated during transcription of MYC modifies DNA structure dynamically at the FUSE element, that together with FUSE Binding Protein and FBP Interacting Repressor is molecular cruise control for MYC. Most recently he is exploring the genome-wide utilization of supercoiled driven changes in DNA to regulate genes in health and disease.
Key publications:
Self-assembly of promoter DNA and RNA Pol II machinery into transcriptionally active biomolecular condensates.
Lewis BA, Das SK, Jha RK, Levens D
Sci Adv 2023 Oct;9(42):eadi4565
MYC assembles and stimulates topoisomerases 1 and 2 in a "topoisome".
Das SK, Kuzin V, Cameron DP, Sanford S, Jha RK, Nie Z, Rosello MT, Holewinski R, Andresson T, Wisniewski J, Natsume T, Price DH, Lewis BA, Kouzine F, Levens D, Baranello L
Mol Cell 2022 Jan;82(1):140-158.e12
Dissecting transcriptional amplification by MYC.
Nie Z, Guo C, Das SK, Chow CC, Batchelor E, Simons SS, Levens D
Elife 2020 Jul;9():
Permanganate/S1 Nuclease Footprinting Reveals Non-B DNA Structures with Regulatory Potential across a Mammalian Genome.
Kouzine F, Wojtowicz D, Baranello L, Yamane A, Nelson S, Resch W, Kieffer-Kwon KR, Benham CJ, Casellas R, Przytycka TM, Levens D
Cell Syst 2017 Mar;4(3):344-356.e7