题   目：Mechanistic insights into how plants modulate three-dimensional chromatin organization

报告人：刘昶 教授

主持人：何跃辉 教授

时   间：2026年09月2日 星期三 10:00 -11:00

报告地点：北京大学王克桢楼 348 教室

报告人简介：

Dr. Chang Liu is a Professor at the University of Hohenheim, Germany. He obtained his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the National University of Singapore in 2005 and 2010, respectively. From 2010 to 2015, he pursued postdoctoral research at the Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory in Singapore and the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Germany. From 2015 to 2020, Dr. Liu led an independent research group at the Centre for Plant Molecular Biology at the University of Tübingen, Germany. He joined the University of Hohenheim as a Junior Professor in 2020 and was appointed Full Professor in 2026. His research focuses on three-dimensional genome organization in plants, with particular emphasis on perinuclear chromatin anchoring and the mechanisms governing chromatin-domain formation.

报告内容：

Three-dimensional genome organization in plants remains less well understood than in vertebrates, where cohesin-mediated loop extrusion plays a central role in forming topological domains. In this seminar, I will present our recent work on chromatin organization in Arabidopsis thaliana. We identified the cohesin regulator PDS5A as a key determinant of chromatin loop extrusion and TAD-like domain formation. Using Hi-C and Micro-C, we found that these domains depend on SYN4, are antagonized by WAPL1/2, and are preferentially anchored at accessible, highly transcribed promoters. Notably, newly formed chromatin contacts in pds5a mutants can act as cis-regulatory interactions that influence target-gene expression. Together, these findings reveal a promoter-centered principle of three-dimensional genome organization in plants.