Five Points Lecture: Chaolin Zhang, PhD

Dr. Chaolin Zhang will talk about his lab’s recent work on systematic dissection of transcriptome diversity generated by dynamic alternative splicing switches during neural development. A focus is on the scale and timing of these switches and the underlying regulatory mechanisms. He will also talk about the lab’s work on the Rbfoxs proteins, a family of RNA-binding proteins implicated in autism and other neurologic disorders, and how they regulate neuronal excitability during development.

Dr. Chaolin Zhang is an Assistant Professor in Department of Systems Biology, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, and Motor Neuron Center at Columbia University. His lab uses an integrative approach to study neuronal RNA-binding proteins and how they regulate the transcriptomic diversity in the nervous system through alternative splicing in both normal and disease contexts. A current focus of the lab is to elucidate mechanisms underlying the precise timing of dynamic transcript isoform switches and the functional consequences during neural development. These works are done in model systems including in vitro neural differentiation from embryonic stem cells and mice. Dr. Zhang’s work has contributed to mapping protein-RNA interactions at single nucleotide resolution, to constructing neuronal RNA regulatory networks with high sensitivity and specificity, and to dissecting their function in neurodevelopment.