Three PIs of BIOPIC, Professors Yanyi Huang, Fuchou Tang and Wensheng Wei have been elected to Peking University-Tsinghua University Center for Life Sciences recently.

As an integral part of the Chinese efforts to build first-rate universities, the Center for Life Sciences (CLS) was established in 2011 at Tsinghua and Peking Universities. It is supported by the central government through the Ministry of Education (MOE), the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and the Ministry of Finance (MOF). The mission of the center is to reform education and research, to attract excellent scientists interested in education, to conduct cutting edge research, and to nurture future generations of innovative scientists and educators.

Collaboration is highly encouraged among scientists from the two universities. At each university, the center recruits faculty members in multiple schools and departments, from biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, to psychology and medicine, nurturing interdisciplinary interactions. The center expects its independent laboratories led by principal investigators to pursue important scientific questions.

Tang lab focuses on the epigenetic mechanisms of self-renewal ability and pluripotency of mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells, embryonic germ (EG) cells and Epi-Stem cells (EpiSC). Through this, they investigate into the epigenetic regulation of mammalian early embryonic development and the global epigenetic reprogramming during the development of primordial germ cells (PGCs).

Huang lab is working on technology development for integrative biology researches. Its current research interests include genome sequencing technologies, microfluidics, and bioimaging. They are developing key advanced technologies to facilitate genome sequencing and its applications, especially the novel chemistry and instruments for DNA sequencing, single-cell genome and transcriptome analysis, as well as epigenomic studies of limited number of cells. They also apply large-scale integrated microfluidic devices to perform quantitative biological studies.

Wei lab is interested in studying the molecular mechanisms of human diseases, especially the host response to microbial pathogenicity. The combination of forward and reverse genetic means is employed, often in a high-throughput fashion, for the identification of host genes of interest. Efforts have also been put into the development and application of eukaryotic gene editing techniques, such as TALENs and CRISPR/Cas9 systems. Their current focuses of diseases include Clostridium difficile and HCV infections.

Huang Lab: http://gene.pku.edu.cn

Tang Lab: http://biopic.pku.edu.cn/detail.aspx?id=3

Wei Lab: http://biopic.pku.edu.cn/detail.aspx?id=111

PKU-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences: http://www.cls.edu.cn