Xin-Hua Feng

AAAS Fellow, National Distinguished Professor, Qiushi Chair Professor

Director of Life Sciences Institute

Zhejiang University

Title:

To TGF-or not to TGF-, that is the question in cancer and development

Abstract:

TGF-, BMPs and related cytokines play essential roles in normal development. In physiological settings, strength and duration of TGF- signaling are tightly and precisely controlled. I am going to share two stories. The first story is on TGF-signaling: how tumor cells develop strategies to escape from TGF- anti-growth control. It has been known that one mechanism to resist the cytostatic effect of TGF- is through inactivating mutations/deletions of genes in the TGF-signaling pathway such as Smad4, which frequently occur in gastrointestinal and pancreatic cancer. However, deletion or mutations in the Smad4 gene are rare in other types of cancers. We have found that TGF- signaling could be impaired by ALK that phosphorylates Smad4 on tyrosine and inactivates the latter’s tumor suppressor activity. The second story is on BMP signaling: how BMP signaling is attenuated by lysosomal degradation of the BMP type I receptor. an ER-resident LC3-binding protein interacts with the type I BMP receptor (BMPR1) and causes the receptor degradation through the autophagosome, thereby impacting intestinal crypt regeneration. Our novel studies gain molecular insights into TGF- superfamily signaling in development and tumorigenesis.

Date and Time

1 Dec 2021, 15:30-16:30

Room A203-1, ZJE building

Host: Dr. Wanlu Liu, Dr.Qianting Zhang

Talk title:

Genetic Switches for Precision Medicine

Speaker Name and Position and Institute:

Haifeng Ye

Vice Dean and Professor of School of Life Sciences

East China Normal University

Speaker introduction or talk content:

Dr. Haifeng Ye received his Ph.D degree and completed his Postdoctoral Research from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zürich). He has been awarded the “ETH Silver Medal” at ETH Zürich in 2013. He started his own group in the School of Life Sciences at East China Normal University (ECNU) in 2014 and established the Biomedical Synthetic Biology Research Center in 2019 at ECNU. In 2020, he was named the Wan Ren Scholar Distinguished Professor. His research interest has been focused on synthetic biology and biomedical engineering with the goal to achieve precise diagnosis and treatment of diseases. His research topics include optogenetics-based precision medicine, synthetic gene circuits for gene- and cell-based precision therapy, synthetic biology-based cancer therapy and precise controlled gene editing. His research work was published in the top scientific journals: Science, Science Translational Medicine, Science Advances, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Communications, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, etc.

Date and Time

17th Nov 2021, 15:30-16:30

Room A203-1, ZJE building

Host: Dr. Jian Liu

Talk title:

Cell fate control at the chromatin level

Speaker Name and Position and Institute:

Duanqing Pei

Chair Professor of Regenerative Biology

School of Life Sciences，Westlake University

Speaker introduction or talk content:

Dr. Duanqing received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991; trained as a postdoctoral fellow at University of Michigan from 1991 to 1996. Dr. Pei began his independent research career in 1996 as Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine, and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2002. Then, he joined immediately the Medical Faculty at Tsinghua University. He moved to the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health (GIBH) in 2004. While pursuing his scholarly work, he has been active in building various institutions and organizations including GIBH, GDL (Guangzhou Regenerative Medicine and Health Guangdong Laboratory), Hong Kong Center for Regenerative Medicine and Health. Dr. Pei was elected as Associate Member of EMBO in 2018. Dr. Pei’s primary interest is to understand cell fate control. His lab has made many pioneer and fundamental discoveries in reprogramming.

Date and Time

27 October 2021, 15:30-16:30

Room A203-1, ZJE building

Host: Dr. Di Chen

1.Talk title:

Cytoskeletal reorganization and membrane dynamics in synaptic development and plasticity

2.Speaker Name and Position and Institute:

Dr. Jia-Jia Liu

Principal investigator, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology

Chinese Academy of Sciences

3.Speaker introduction or talk content:

Dr. Liu received her bachelor’s degree from Wuhan University, master’s from Shanghai Institute of Cell Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and PhD from the University of Chicago. Dr. Liu is currently an investigator at Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The primary research interest of her group is neuronal cell biology, focusing on the molecular and cellular mechanisms for neural activity-dependent receptor trafficking, lipid metabolism and membrane remodeling, and their physiological functions in synaptic plasticity and higher brain functions.

Date and Time

20 September 2021, 15:30-16:30

Room A203, ZJE building

Host: Dr. Zhi Hong

浙江大学爱丁堡大学联合学院2021级新生开学典礼将于9月12日早上进行，欢迎师生前来参加

真诚邀请您参加6月22日 ZJE 2021届本科生毕业晚会，一起见证这个重要时刻。

Talk title:

The Unconventional LRRC8 VRAC-STING Signaling and Metabolic-epigenetic Regulation of Antiviral and Antitumor Immunity

Speaker

Prof. Hui Xiao

Unit of Immune Signaling and Regulation

Institut Pasteur of Shanghai, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Introduction:

The major goal of Prof. Xiao research is to decipher the signaling mechanisms by which pattern-recognition receptors such as TLRs, CLRs, RLR and cGAS/STING induce the expression of cytokines (including IL-12, IL-10, and IL-23) and IFN-a/b, reprogram cell metabolism and epigenetics, and coordinate cell death/survival. The ultimate goal is to understand how the innate immune system manages to coordinate the adequate innate and adaptive immune responses to combat pathogens and cancer while tolerating commensals. His lab has recently published several high-impact works in Nature Immunology, Immunity, JEM and JCI, etc.

Date and Time:

23 June 2021, 15:30-16:30

Room A203, ZJE Building

Host: Prof. Linrong Lu

Title: The immune challenges of stem cell therapy and tumor immunotherapy

Speaker: Prof. Yang Xu

Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University

Institute of Translational Medicine of Zhejiang University

Dr. Xu received his Bachelor’s degree from Wuhan University in 1989 and PhD degree in immunology from Harvard University in 1994. He completed his postdoctoral training at MIT under the guidance of Nobel Laureate David Baltimore. Dr. Xu joined the faculty of Division of Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego in 1997 and became a tenured full professor in 2008. Dr. Xu is interested in stem cell biology and cancer biology. His group discovered the immunogenicity of induced pluripotent stem cells and the immune tolerance strategies for stem cell therapy. Dr. Xu has published over 100 papers in top journals such as Nature, Cell, Cancer Cell, Cell Stem Cell, Immunity, Nature Immunology, Nature Cell biology.

Date and Time:

05/25/2021 15:00-17:00

ZJE building A203

Host: Prof. Suhong Xu

Title: Why redhaired individuals are so prone to developing melanoma?

Speakers: Prof. Rutao Cui

Qiushi Endowed Professor

Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University

The melanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R), a G-protein-coupled receptor, has a crucial role in human and mouse pigmentation. Individuals carrying MC1R variants, especially those associated with red hair color, fair skin and poor tanning ability (denoted as RHC variants), are associated with higher risk of melanoma. We reported that MC1R controls UVB-induced G1- like cell cycle arrest and subsequent onset of premature senescence in melanocytes, abrogation of which contributes to melanoma development. Mechanistically, we demonstrated that WT-MC1R stabilized PTEN against proteolytic degradation under UV exposure, resulting in inhibition of AKT phosphorylation and activation after UV exposure.

Date and Time:

05/25/2021 15:00-17:00

ZJE building A203

Host: Prof. Suhong Xu

Talk title:

LKB1 behind the wheel of lung cancer plasticity

Speaker: Prof. Hongbin Ji

PI, Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science, CAS

Speaker introduction or talk content

Prof. Hongbin Ji finished his postdoc training in Harvard Medical School and is now the Professor in Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has received many honors and awards including National Outstanding Youth Fund.He holds a special interest in lung cancer genomics and biology. His research focuses on deciphering the molecular mechanism involved in lung cancerigenesis with the integration of genomic analyses of human lung cancer samples and functional and mechanistic studies in cancer cell lines, animal models and clinical specimens. These findings are published in a group of high-impact journals, such as Nature, Cancer Cell, Nature Genetics.

Date and Time:

05/26/2021, 15:30-16:30

ZJE building A203

Host: Dr. Jian Liu

Talk title:

Genome editing technology for disease modeling and gene therapy

Speaker: Prof. Dali Li

Professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, senior investigator in school of life sciences, East China Normal University

Speaker introduction：

Prof. Li is the vice director of Shanghai Key Laboratory of Regulatory Biology.  He received the Young Cheung Kong Scholar Reward Young Scholar Program in 2016 and The National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars in 2020. His research concerns improvement of genome editing technology and developing CRISPR/Cas system mediated gene therapy for genetic disorders. His group was one of the first team to report generation of genetically modified mouse and rat disease models through TALEN and CRISPR/Cas technology, and identified a novel gain-of-function pathogenic mutation in SYK gene in humans to induce immunodeficiency. His group findings are published in a group of high-impact journals, such as Nature Biotechnology, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Genetics.

Date and Time:

05/12/2021 15:30-16:30

ZJE building A203

Host: Dr. Jian Liu

Talk title:

Pyroptosis, inflammation and antitumor immunity

Speaker:

Prof. Feng Shao

Principal Investigator and Deputy Director for Academic Affairs, NIBS, Beijing

Member of National Academy of Sciences China

Speaker introduction:

Prof. Feng Shao obtained his B.S. degree from Peking University in 1996, and M.S. degree from Institute of Biophysics in 1999. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from University of Michigan in 2003, followed by post-doc training in UCSD and Harvard Medical School. Prof. Shao established his lab in NIBS since 2005. His lab combines multiple approaches including biochemical reconstitution, cell biology and mouse genetics to identify new components in pathogen-induced inflammasome activation and to further reveal the underlying biochemical mechanism. Prof. Shao has published a serial of papers in Nature, Cell, and Science, laying the foundation for dissecting the precise and complex mechanisms of innate immunity defense for bacterial infection.

Date and Time:

9 April 2021, 10:00-11:00

West Complex Auditorium (西侧组团报告厅)

Host: Dr. Di Chen

Talk title:

Intelligent multimodality super-resolution microscopy developments and applications

Speaker Name and Title :

Prof. Dong Li

PI, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences 

Speaker introduction or talk content:

Dr. Dong Li received B.E. in optical engineering from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China in 2002, and completed his Ph.D. in electronic and computer engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2011. He spent the next four years for postdoctoral research of developing super-resolution microscopy at Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute. After that he joined Institute of Biophysics as principal investigator. Dr. Li’s group focuses on developing novel optical imaging methods, which enable us to interrogate the dynamics of biological processes with unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution.

Date and Time:

9^th April 2021, 15:30-16:30

ZJE building A203

Host: Prof. Suhong Xu

Prof. Baowei Jiao received his Ph.D. degree in the Chinese University of Hong Kong and finished postdoctoral training in the University of Massachusetts Medical School, USA. Currently, he is a professor at the CAS Center for Excellence in Animal Evolution and Genetics and serves as the Vice Dean of State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution in China. His research focuses on mammary development and breast cancer stem cells. He has published a series of papers in high profile journals including Cell, PNAS, Nature Communications and Science Advances. Prof. Jiao will introduce his research progress on milk secretion and long non-coding RNA during mammary gland development and also the regulatory mechanism of breast cancer stem cells.

11. November 15:30-16:30

Webex Meeting:

https://zjuintl.webex.com.cn/meet/zhuzhu

Title: Towards quantitative mechanistic prediction in biology

Speaker: 

Dr. Lucas Carey, Principal Investigator at Center for Quantitative Biology, Peking University & Peking-Tsinghua Joint Center for Life Sciences. 

Summary of the talk:

Understanding the effects of mutations and how phenotypes are encoded in the genome are two of the primary goals of modern biology. The ability to make quantitative predictions as to the effects of complex genetic changes will enable breakthroughs in personalized medicine. In addition, quantitative mechanistic models can be used to investigate biological processes that are difficult or impossible to probe experimentally. However, in most cases, neither the consequences of mutations nor their mechanism of action can be predicted. I will discuss some of the complexity that makes phenotype prediction so hard and how my group is combining mathematical modelling with high-throughput quantitative experiments to identify new mechanisms by which genetic and non-genetic heterogeneity in both populations and in single cells affects the mapping from genotype to phenotype. 

28^th October, 2020

15:30

Host Dr. Xianghua Li

Paradigm of translational research-A lesson from Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy

Speak: Prof. Min-Xin Guan

Associate Dean of Faculty of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences, ZJU

Dr. Min-Xin Guan graduated with BS in biology from Hangzhou University (previous and current Zhejiang University) in 1983. He did his postgraduate study at the Australian National University (Ph.D. 1993; Advisor: Professor G. Desmond Clark-Walker).  Dr. Guan conducted postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Professor Giuseppe Attardi at the California Institute of Technology (1993-1999). In 1999, he started his independent research as an assistant professor at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati, eventually becoming a full professor in Division of Human Genetics, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 2011. Since 2011, he has been joining the faculty at Zhejiang University as the founding Director of Institute of Genetics, Dean of College of Life Sciences (2011-2013), Associate Dean of Faculty of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences (2015-present). Dr. Guan's research focuses on human mitochondrial genetics and biomedicine. Guan’s pioneering work with mitochondrial diseases included the discoveries of the mitochondrial cause of maternally inherited hearing loss, Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy and hypertension. Guan has published 155 manuscripts on mitochondrial diseases in the high impact journals.  Dr. Guan served as the 4th president of Asian Society of Mitochondrial Research and Medicine (2011-2014). 

Time: 14th Oct.2020， 3:30pm

Host : Prof. Linrong Lu

ZJE Building A203

主题:Development of an automated tissue-engineering platform to produce human liver tissue for basic and applied research

Prof David C. Hay, Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University of Edinburgh

Liver disease is an escalating global health issue. While liver transplantation is an effective mode of therapy, it cannot meet clinical demand. Developing renewable sources of human liver tissue is therefore attractive. Pluripotent stem cell-derived liver tissue represents a potential alternative to cadaver derived hepatocytes and whole organ transplant. At present, two dimensional differentiation procedures deliver tissue lacking certain functions and is unstable in culture. Efforts to overcome these limitations include the engineering of three-dimensional (3D) liver spheres. Although enabling for the field, their widespread application and adoption is limited due to expense and experimental reproducibility. To address this issue, we have developed an automated and economical platform to produce liver tissue at scale for modelling disease and small molecule screening. We demonstrate that stem cell derived 3D liver tissue exhibits stable phenotype, providing an attractive resource for long-term modelling studies. Going forward we believe that this resource may also have an important roles to play in supporting failing liver function in humans.

webex meeting:https://zjuintl.webex.com.cn/meet/zhuzhu

Speaker: Dr. Xianghua Li (ZJE)

Time：3:30pm；09. 23

Webex meeting: https://zjuintl.webex.com.cn/meet/yuchenmao

Title： Genotype - Phenotype mapping, towards personalised medicine 

A goal of biology is to predict how mutations combine to alter phenotypes, fitness and disease. It is often assumed that mutations combine additively or with interactions that can be predicted. I will describe our work showing that this assumption is incorrect. Mutations combine differently at different expression levels. Sometimes predicting how mutations combine would be impossible even with perfect measurements of the mutational effects on a trait and the mechanistic understanding of the genetic system. I will also share my future plans to tackle other challenges in genotype – phenotype mapping, combining experimental work on various model organisms and computational analysis.

ZJE 2020 开学典礼将于9月13日在校区多功能厅举行。

仪式将于8点半开始入场，9点正式开始，期待师生们积极参与！

主题:Bats as reservoirs of zoonotic viruses and SARS-Like viruses.

Aaron Irving is an Assistant Professor at the Zhejiang University-University of Edinburgh Institute (ZJE), Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Haining, China. His work centres on host-pathogen interactions of zoonotic viruses with a focus on comparative immunology between bats and humans. He earned his PhD at the University of Queensland on Varicella Zoster Virus evasion of the host Interferon Response. Following this he pursued postdoctoral studies at Monash Institute of Medical Research specializing in viralhost interactions, cell biology responses to pathogen infection, autophagy and other aspects of infectious disease. Consequent work at Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore on alternative hosts for disease, bats, had a large focus on comparative biology, comparative immunology, in vivo models and disease ecology. This work involved multiple emerging and re-emerging virus infections with work on multiple flaviviruses, Influenza, paramyxoviruses, OrthoReoviruses and MERS-CoV. This allowed identification of key differences in pathways in IFN signalling, virus sensing, inflammasome activation and in vivo cytokine production. This work is further pursued with his new role at ZJE and an expansion of OneHealth surveillance/ risk factor identification and the application to human immunology of factors from this natural, healthy wildlife host.

时间：15:30-16:30, 15 July

Webex Meeting

请扫描二维码进行报名：

主题:Reversible Microhomology-Mediated Tandem Duplications Cause Prevalent Genome Divergence

主讲人: 何向伟教授

The genome is believed to be highly stable in general whereas tandem repeats at specific loci are mutational hotspots, which alter the copy number readily. The evolutionary origin of the tandem repeats, however, remains elusive. Our recent work in the fission yeast S. pombe has discovered that throughout the genome, tandem duplications arise spontaneously from unique sequence via a process we called “microhomology-mediated tandem duplication – MTD”, and may serve as the seeds for tandem repeat formation. Moreover, the duplications can also collapse back to the original single copy sequence. Thus, the prevalent, spontaneous MTDs underscore a hidden layer of sub-clonal genome dynamics and functional divergence. 

时间：15:30-16:30, 1 July

Webex Meeting

请扫描二维码进行报名：

主题:"Cell size: an X-citing path to understanding aging and cancer?"

主讲人: Dr. Mikael Bjorklund 

"For decades, biologists from undergraduates to Nobel prize winners have been fascinated how cells are able to control their size. It is well known that each cell type has their characteristic size, but why is it important that particular cell types maintain a particular size? Such a question is not just blue-skies basic research, but has important implications for multiple human diseases. In this talk I will discuss recent progress in understanding how cells sense size. I will then lay out the logic how mapping out the mechanisms leading to loss of cell size homeostasis may help to gain systems-level understanding of aging, cancer and many chronic human diseases."

时间：2020年6月17日，15:30-16:30

Webex Meeting

请扫描二维码进行报名：

读博还是读硕？爱丁堡大学奖学金资助硕士项目如何申请？申请硕士项目的流程是怎样的？如何利用学校的教师资源申请暑研？公司实习VS实验室实习？

你关心的问题都在这里了

国际校区学生第一党支部主题党日“幸福感提升计划”之
“深造有方”第三弹：海外硕士项目、暑研申请经验分享

时间：4月9日周四19:00-20:30
（具体地点将公布在各年级群）

国内推免经验分享

在国内有了心仪的导师，如何成为Ta的学生？还在迷茫是出国留学还是国内深造？想要探索出国和本专业以外的可能性？学长学姐为你们准备了所能想到最全面的国内深造相关信息~

国际校区学生第一党支部3月主题党日“幸福感提升计划”之“深造有方”第二弹：推荐免试研究生经验分享
时间：3月21日周六10：00-11：30am（具体地点将公布在各年级群）

 内容安排

Part1：
申请国内研究生（硕士+博士）流程
如何获得推免名额？
 
Part2：
保研太难？考研需要做些什么？
浙大基础医学院申报介绍
 
Part3：
ZJE学院申报介绍
如何申请名校夏令营？
 
Part4：
保研Q & A

 下期预告

预告/“深造有方”后续也精彩
第三弹：“生医PLUS”职业生涯：海外硕士项目申请经验分享