Dr. Jian Yan
Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Sciences
City University of Hong Kong

Date: Wednesday, 29-May-2019
Time: 11:00 a.m.
Venue: Seminar Room 1, G/F, Laboratory Block
Faculty of Medicine Building
21 Sassoon Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong

Summary:
Large numbers of sequence variants have been linked to complex human traits and diseases, but deciphering their biological function remains challenging especially for the non-protein-coding variants. Dr. Yan’s group have systematically assessed the differential binding of transcription factors (TF) to different alleles of non-coding variants in the human genome. Using an ultra-high throughput multiplex protein-DNA binding assay, they examined the binding of 270 human TFs to 95,886 common sequence variants associated with type 2 diabetes. They then employed a machine-learning approach to predict differential DNA binding of 124 TFs to other common non-coding variants in the human genome. The newly derived models outperformed current position-weight matrices (PWM) in describing TF binding to non-coding variants, and facilitated discovery of potential causal variants and dysregulated molecular pathways in human diseases.

ALL ARE WELCOME