Bing Zhu

Biography

1999- Ph.D., Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences 1995- M.S., China National Rice Research Institute 1992- B.S., Zhejiang University, China 2014-   Investigator, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences 2011-2014  Associate Investigator, National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijing, China 2006-2011  Assistant Investigator, National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijing, China 2002-2006  Research Teaching Specialist, Lab of Dr. Danny Reinberg, Howard-Hughes Medical Institute/University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey/ Robert Wood Johnson Medical School 1999-2002  Research Fellow, Lab of Dr. Jean-Pierre Jost, Friedrich Miescher Institute, Switzerland

Research Interest

Our ultimate goal is to understand how we can qualify to be successful multi-cellular organisms. Successful multi-cellular organisms are required to achieve two simple tasks: 1. Cells should be able to alter their fate to generate distinct cell types for different functions, in a process termed differentiation; 2. Cells and their progenies should be able to maintain their fate when differentiation is no more required at the post-mitotic stages or during proliferation. DNA is unarguably the carrier of genetic information. However, DNA sequence alone cannot explain how hundreds of cell types in a complex multi-cellular organism, such as a human individual can possess distinct transcription programs, while sharing the same genetic information. This is believed to be achieved by fine-tuning our genetic information with a so-called “epigenetic” system. To fulfill the two basic tasks challenging the multi-cellular organisms, epigenetic system must simultaneously offer dual characteristics, “Plasticity & Inheritability”. Plasticity allows the transformation of one genome into hundreds of epigenomes and transcriptomes, whereas inheritability permits the maintenance of every single epigenome and its corresponding transcriptome.