The Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics presents:
Weixin Tang, PhD
Associate Professor
University of Chicago
Presentation:
"Evolving Deaminases for Epigenetic Profiling and Genome Editing"
N6-methyladenosine (m6A), the most prevalent internal mRNA modification in higher eukaryotes, depicts a regulatory network extensively involved in the mRNA life cycle. To elucidate the multitude of functions served by m6A, we developed evolved TadA-assisted N6-methyladenine sequencing (eTAM-seq), an enzyme-assisted sequencing technology that detects and quantifies m6A by global adenosine deamination. With eTAM-seq, we profiled m6A in the transcriptomes of cell lines and mouse tissues. I will discuss development, applications, and current limitations of eTAM-seq.
For the second half of my talk, I will present our recent progress on precision base editing. More than half of pathogenic point mutations in humans are, in principle, amenable to base editing, but their correction is often limited by bystander editing of neighboring bases (occurring to >80% of the pool). I will present our efforts to engineer base editors with programmable context specificity, which enables precise correction of disease-causing mutations while reducing both bystander and off-target editing.
Host: Dr. Ruli Gao, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics
Ashley Johnson
(312) 503-3426
Email