Talk title: Sequence-basis of transcription initiation in the human genome

Speaker: Jian Zhou, PhD
Assistant Professor 
Lyda Hill Department of Bioinformatics, UTSW

Abstract: 

Transcription initiation is a process that is essential to ensuring the proper function of any gene, yet we still lack a unified understanding of sequence patterns and rules that explain most transcription start sites in the human genome. By predicting transcription initiation at base-pair resolution from sequences with a deep learning–inspired explainable model called Puffin, we show that a small set of simple rules can explain transcription initiation at most human promoters. We identify key sequence patterns that contribute to human promoter activity, each activating transcription with distinct position-specific effects. Furthermore, we explain the sequence basis of bidirectional transcription at promoters, identify the links between promoter sequence and gene expression variation across cell types, and explore the conservation of sequence determinants of transcription initiation across mammalian species

Speaker Bio:

Since November 2019, Jian Zhou has been appointed Assistant Professor in the Lyda Hill Department of Bioinformatics. He is a Lupe Murchison Foundation Scholar in Medical Research and is a Scholar of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). Before joining UTSW, he was a Flatiron Research Fellow at the Center of Computational Biology at Flatiron Institute, New York. He received his B.S. in Biological Sciences from Peking University and Ph.D. in Quantitative and Computational Biology from Princeton University.