The sixth annual BioMaPS Summer School will feature:

Chromatin Structure and Gene Regulation

June 9-13, 2008

Life Sciences Auditorium, Life Sciences Building

Busch Campus, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ

Directions to Life Sciences Building

Organizers:

Alexandre Morozov, Rutgers University: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  

Vasily Studitsky, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  

The course is sponsored by the BioMaPS Institute for Quantitative Biology at Rutgers University.   The National Institutes of Health provides partial funding of the BioMaPS Summer School. The work funded by the National Institutes of Health was through the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research, Grant 5 K07 GM72919.  Information on this RFA, "Curriculum Development Award in Interdisciplinary Research" can be found at http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/. 

To attend please submit a Registration form.

There is no registration fee but registration is required.  If you have any questions on the Summer School, need travel assistance, help in hotel accommodations or arranging for short-term summer graduate student housing, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Course Description

The course is a five-day intensive investigation of chromatin structure and gene regulation divided into two related parts:

1. Basic introduction to chromatin structure and gene regulation for participants with extensive training in the mathematical, computational, and physical sciences but with a more limited background in molecular biology.

2. Advanced reviews of current contributions to the understanding of the interplay between chromatin structure and gene regulation in eukaryotic organisms.

The speakers will discuss genomic studies of chromatin aided by modern high-throughput technologies, histone modifications and signaling, chromatin remodeling, and how chromatin states are assembled and maintained in the cell. A separate session will be devoted to computational studies of chromatin using biophysical and statistical approaches. 

If you would like to present a poster on a related topic during the Poster Session (afternoon of Wednesday, June 11) please indicate in the relevant section of your registration form and provide a title and abstract.  Requests must be approved by the organizers before presenting a poster. 

The lectures have been designed to provide participants with a limited knowledge of biology a smooth transition to the understanding and appreciation of cutting-edge research on the interplay of chromatin structure and gene regulation.  Tutorial introductions will be presented at the beginning of each day from Monday, June 9 through Thursday, June 12. 

Daily Schedule 

June 9:  Chromatin structure and genomic studies of chromatin

Session Chair: Vincent Pirrotta

Morning:

9:20 - 9:30 AM: Alexandre Morozov & Vasily Studitsky - Introduction and welcoming remarks

9:30 - 10:30 AM: Kevin Struhl (KEYNOTE SPEAKER, Harvard Medical School) “Transcriptional regulatory mechanisms and epigenetic inheritance”

10:30 -  12:00 Noon: Jeff Hayes* (University of Rochester Medical Center) "Intra- and inter-nucleosome interactions of the core histone tail domains"

12:00 - 1:30 PM: Lunch Break

Afternoon:

1:30 - 2:30 PM: Vincent Pirrotta (Rutgers University) "Polycomb mechanisms and genomic programming"

2:30 - 3:30 PM: Frank Pugh (Penn State University) "Organization of chromatin and the transcription machinery throughout the yeast and fly genomes"

3:30 -3:45 PM: Break

3:45 - 4:45 PM Jason Lieb (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) "Chromatin-mediated mechanisms for the regulation of genome accessibility in yeast, worms, and humans"  

June 10: Computational modeling of chromatin states

Session Chair: Wilma Olson

Morning: 

9:30 - 10:00 AM: Swagatam Mukhopadhyay* (Rutgers University) "Introduction to the polymer physics of chromatin" 

10:00 - 11:00 AM:Anirvan Sengupta (Rutgers University) "Epigenetic chromatin silencing" 

11:00 - 12:00 Noon:Wilma Olson & Guohui Zheng (Rutgers University) "Flexing and Folding of nucleosome-bound DNA" 

12:00 - 1:30 PM: Lunch Break 

Afternoon: 

1:30 - 2:30 PM: Alexandre Morozov (Rutgers University) "Biophysical models of chromatin structure and gene regulation" 

2:30 - 3:30 PM: Victor Zhurkin (NIH) "A new model for the linker histone binding based on comparative sequence analysis of chicken and yeast nucleosomal DNA"

3:30 - 3:45 PM: Break 

3:45 - 4:45 PM: Guocheng Yuan (Harvard School of Public Health)"Prediction of nucleosome positions"  

June 11: Histone modifications and signaling

  
Session Chair: Sergei Grigoryev

Morning: 

9:30 - 11:00 AM: Sergei Grigoryev* (Penn State University College of Medicine) “Inter-nucleosome interactions in chromatin higher-order packing” 

11:00- 12:00 Noon: Patrick Grant (University of Virginia) "The SAGA of Histone Modifications" 

12:00 - 1:30 PM: Lunch Break

Afternoon:

1:30 - 2:30 PM: Sepideh Khorasanizadeh (University of Virginia) “Diversity in Chromatin Docking Interactions of Chromodomains”

2:30 - 3:30 PM: Ruth Steward (Rutgers University) "Functional importance of Histone H4K20 methylation" 

3:30 -5:30 PM: Poster Session
 

June 12: Chromatin remodeling and transitions

 
Session Chair: David Clark

Morning:

9:30 - 11:00 AM: David Clark* (NIH) "Gene Activation in Yeast: Chromatin Remodeling and Nucleosome Dynamics" 

11:00 - 12:00 Noon: Vasily Studitsky (UMDNJ) “Mechanism of nucleosome survival and chromatin remodeling during transcription by Pol II” 

12:00 - 1:30 PM: Lunch Break

Afternoon:

1:30 - 2:30 PM: Blaine Bartholomew (Southern Illinois University School of Medicine) “Mechanism of ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling: lessons from ISW2 and SWI/SNF”  

2:30 - 3:30 PM: Paul Kaufman (University of Massachusetts Medical School) “Histone Modification, Deposition, and Turnover”

3:30 - 3:45 PM: Break

3:45 - 4:45 PM: Thomas Kusch (Rutgers University) “Mix and Match: Landscaping Chromatin during Transcription” 

June 13: Programming functional chromatin states

Session Chair: Gary Felsenfeld

Morning:

9:30 - 10:30 AM: Gary Felsenfeld (NIH) “The establishment and maintenance of chromatin boundaries” 

10:30 - 10:45 AM: Break

10:45 - 11:45 AM: Marc Gartenberg (UMDNJ)  "The Rise and Fall of Models for Heterochromatin Establishment"

11:45 - 12:45 PM: Dmitry Fyodorov (Albert Einstein College of Medicine) “ATP-dependent chromatin assembly”

Afternoon: 

12:45 - 1:00 PM: Alexandre Morozov & Vasily Studitsky: Closing Remarks

Course Goals and Intended Audience

This short course on chromatin structure and gene regulation is designed to:

1. enable participants with advanced training in the mathematical, computational, and physical sciences, but with a more limited background in biology, to contribute to research at the interface of the biological, mathematical, and physical sciences;

2. introduce participants with traditional backgrounds in biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology to the potential value of quantitative approaches in their own work;

3. provide participants with in-depth training in an important subfield within molecular biology.

    

The course is appropriate for graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, faculty members, and biomedical researchers from non-academic organizations.

*Part of this presentation is a tutorial.