Student PULSE Seminar
Monday April 21 at 5pm: Student PULSE Seminars
Our monthly seminar series for undergraduate researchers continues this academic year starting next week! Presentations by Undergraduates in Life Science and Engineering (PULSE) is a cross-institutional partnership between Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, Coppin State University, and Morgan State University. Every month our PULSE seminar is held over Zoom and features a 20 minute talk from undergraduate students at each institution. Join us this month to hear about the exciting research from our young researchers! Attendance from all students, faculty, staff, and family/friends are welcomed.
This month JHU selected Will Chavez who will present his work with Dr. Reza Kalhor, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering.
Manifestation and Evolution of 3D Chromatin Conformation Throughout Mice Embryogenesis
Epigenetic factors, such as histone marks and promoters, have been frequently studied within an individualized setting for simplicity. Interestingly, higher-order chromatin structures reveal similar findings while better accounting for the whole system’s behavior – such information can be acquired using Hi-C, which also details chromatin accessibility. This convenience of Hi-C makes it suitable for studying the evolution of 3D chromatin conformation as a function of epigenetic changes. However, cell state and cellular lineage may also impact the spatiotemporal development of chromatin. To study all of these factors in tandem, mouse embryonic stem cells were processed with a one-pot method for Hi-C and RNA-seq, with the latter’s transcriptomic data being used to identify differentiated cells. The Mouse for Actively Recording Cells 1 (MARC1) strain was used to determine cellular lineage through in vivo barcoding of single cells, working through a homing CRISPR system that accumulates non-homologous end-joined mutations after rounds of cell division.