Lectures and seminars Guest seminar - Ph.D. Takashi Fukaya, University of Tokyo
Title: Molecular dynamics of transcription hubs in living Drosophila embryos.
Time and location: 1pm in D1012 Biomedicum floor 10, February 16
Host: Camilla Björkegren
Associate Professor Takashi Fukaya, Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, University of Tokyo.
Enhancers are the key agent of transcriptional control that instructs spatiotemporal patterning of gene expression in development. Recent whole-genome studies have identified approximately 400,000 enhancers in the human genome, suggesting that a typical human gene is regulated by ~20 enhancers. While the biological significance of enhancers is becoming increasingly clear in recent years, the basic mechanism of enhancer action has been still largely unclear. Especially, temporal dynamics of enhancer-promoter communication persists as an outstanding mystery in the central dogma. By combining a wide-range of experimental approaches including live-imaging, biochemistry and fly genetics, we aim to elucidate fundamentally new dimension of the molecular mechanism underlying eukaryotic transcription.