BME Seminar: “Chemical biology approaches for assessing genome instability”

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Feng Tang, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, University of Florida

Bio: Dr. Tang is an assistant professor in the department of Chemistry at University of Florida. He received his B.S. in chemistry and Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from Wuhan University, China. Dr. Tang has been awarded the prestigious NIH Pathway to Independence (K99/R00) Award. Tang lab aims to create an integrated platform—combining analytical chemistry, chemical biology, high-throughput sequencing, and bioinformatics—for multidimensional profiling of DNA damage in the human genome. To illuminate how diverse DNA lesions arise and are repaired in normal and diseased cells, opening new avenues in cancer biology, aging research, environmental toxicology, and the safety profiling of gene-editing tools. Ongoing projects in my lab include: (1) Next-generation sequencing for assessing the dynamics of damage formation and resolution in human genome, including oxidative damage and abasic sites; (2) Mass-spectrometry methods to characterize and quantify DNA damage and to profile the binding proteomes of DNA damage and repair factors; (3) Third generation sequencing of multiple DNA damage across the entire human genome.

Abstract: Multiple processes contribute to somatic mutations in cancer genomes, these mutations mainly arise from three sources: 1) Dysfunctions of DNA polymerases, including mutations in replicative polymerase or the activity of translesion synthesis polymerase; 2) Environmental exposures, such as UV radiation and tobacco smoking; 3) Endogenous metabolism. Understanding the origin of these mutational signatures will help us prevent and intervene the cancer initiation, progression, and drug resistance. My long-term research goal is to figure out how DNA damage and polymerases contribute to the mutational signature in the cancer genome. In this lecture, I will first introduce a DNA-protein cross-linking sequencing (DPC-Seq) method, which enables the genome-wide mapping of thymidine glycol (Tg) in human cells. I will also describe how we utilize proteomic and genomic techniques to investigate the genome-wide occupancy and interaction partners of DNA polymerase κ.