School of Biomedical Sciences is pleased to invite you to join the following seminar:

Date: Tuesday, 6 December, 2022
Time: 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm
Venue: Seminar Room 1, Laboratory Block, 21 Sassoon Road

Speaker: Professor Weinian Shou, Professor of Pediatrics, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Medical & Molecular Genetics, and Pharmacology & Toxicology, Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSOM)
Title: The Epigenetic Regulation of Cardiogenesis and Disease Pathogenesis

Biography

Professor Weinian Shou is a Professor of Pediatrics, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Medical & Molecular Genetics, and Pharmacology & Toxicology, Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSOM). Professor Shou’s research lab is located in the Herman B Wells Center for Pediatric Research, which is one of the US national leaders in pediatric clinical and basic science research, currently ranked 3rd in the US in federal research funding. The major research focus undertaken in Shou lab is to determine the molecular signaling pathways involved in the cardiac ventricular wall growth, maturation, regeneration, and function in normal and various disease models using mouse genetic manipulations and gene editing technology in hESCs and hiPSCs. Shou lab is among the first to determine the underlying molecular mechanism for ventricular wall trabeculation and compaction and the pathogenesis of LVNC. In the past, the Shou lab published total of 120 peer-reviewed research articles; among them appeared in Nature, Cell, Development Cell, PNAS, Development, Circulation, Circulation Research, Nature Communications. Since joining IUSOM, Dr. Shou’s research has been well-supported by federal and private foundations, including three highly regarded NIH-P01 projects. Dr. Shou has trained 17 graduate students and 28 postdoc and clinical research fellows, and mentored 6 junior faculties. Many of these trainees have now become independent faculties in the academic institutes in the US, China, Japan, and Europe. Dr. Shou has served in NIH study sections and committees in the research fields of Cardiovascular Development, Cardiomyopathies and Heart Failure, Stem Cell Biology, Reproductive Biology, and served in American Heart Association (AHA) Cardiovascular Developmental Biology National Review Panel. Dr. Shou has been an Associate Editor for Pediatric Cardiology since 2012 and two terms of Editorial Board Member for JBC, and has served as a reviewer for major scientific journals.

Abstract

The seminar will focus on recent progress on studying a member of SET and MYND domain-containing protein (SMYDs) family during cardiogenesis and early embryogenesis. SMYDs are unique lysine methyltransferases that play important roles during embryogenesis via their regulation of histone H3 lysine residues that impart both transcriptional activation and repression functions. Among the SMYD family members, SMYD1 is a well-known epigenetic regulator for cardiomyocyte differentiation and maturation. Previously, we have identified mutations in SMYD4 associated with congenital heart defects (CHDs) and used Zebrafish model to demonstrate that smyd4 is critical to early embryonic development and cardiogenesis. This finding is further confirmed by using the in vitro hESC-to-cardiomyocyte differentiation system. Professor Shou’s seminar will discuss the role of SMYD4 in cardiogenic-lineage specification and differentiation prior to overt heart formation and its potential connection to the development of CHDs.

ALL ARE WELCOME

Should you have any enquiries, please feel free to contact Miss Angela Wong at 3917 9216.