Adaptive Evolution of Gene Regulation at Systems Level

Biosciences Seminar Series

Speaker: Dr Jian Lu, Peking University, China

Host: Dr Yun Fan

Abstract: A central question in evolutionary biology is how genotypes affect phenotypes. It is widely believed that gene expression changes can affect phenotypes. In my lab, we combine traditional evolutionary studies and functional genomics to address some fundamental issues related to gene regulation at the post-transcriptional level. The key questions we ask include: What is the role of natural selection in the evolution of gene regulation? How do gene expression changes contribute to adaptations in natural populations and cause human diseases? How does gene expression architecture maintain biological robustness? We address these questions by conducting research  on the post-transcriptional gene regulation. I will talk about our recent progress in understanding the regulatory function of small RNAs, RNA editing, uORFs, and the usage of amino acids in the proteomes during cancer evolution.

References:

1.      Zhang H #, Wang YR #, Li J, Chen H, He XL, Zhang HW, Liang H*, Lu J* (2018). Biosynthetic Energy Cost for Amino Acids Decreases in Cancer Evolution. Nature Communications. 9(1):4124. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-06461-

2.      Zhang H#, Dou SQ#, He F, Luo JJ, Wei LP, and Lu J* (2018). Genome-wide maps of ribosomal occupancy provide insights into adaptive evolution and regulatory roles of uORFs during Drosophila development. PLOS Biology. 16(7):e2003903. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2003903.

3.      Luo S#, He F#, Luo J#, Dou S#, Wang Y#, Guo A, Lu J* (2018). Drosophila tsRNAs preferentially suppress general translation machinery via antisense pairing and participate in cellular starvation response. Nucleic Acids Research. 46(10):5250-5268. 

4.      Luo J#, Wang Y#, Yuan J#, Zhao Z, Lu J* (2018). MicroRNA duplication accelerates the recruitment of new targets during vertebrate evolution. RNA. 24(6):787-802.

5.      Duan Y#, Dou S#, Zhang H#, Wu C, Wu M, Lu J* (2018). Linkage of A-to-I RNA editing in metazoans and the impact on genome evolution. Mol Biol Evol. 35(1):132-148.