On the morning of April 19th, Professor Jerry Workman, who serves as a member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) and an investigator of Stowers Institute for Medical Research gave a lecture titled Protein complexes that modify chromatin at the lecture hall of the National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement in HZAU at the invitation of Professor Pen Nan from the college of Life Science and Technology. Professor Wang Xuelu, dean of the college of Life Science and Technology presided over the lecture.

Prof. Jerry Workman first introduced the structures and categories of the purified histone modification complexes from his laboratory. Then he took the SAGA complex from the model organism drosophila melanogaster as an example, expounding on the different roles that SAGA subunit played in its embryonic development. He explained that in oogenesis, the required gene needed histone acetyltransferase (HAT) rather than deubiquitinating enzymes (DUB). However, in the following studies, it was shown that the DUB was necessary in various gene expressions during the oogenesis as the mutation of DUB will lead to the phenotype of the cellular defect. It revealed the important role of different subunits of the saga complex in embryo development. He then introduced the role of a histone modified H3T11 phosphorylation (H3pT11) in gene expression and in cell senescence. H3t11 phosphorylation (H3pT11) can regulate the related gene expressions of metabolism and transformation under the nutrient pressure. Under this condition, CK2 (Casein Kinase2) could catalyze H3pT11. Finally, he suggested that CK2 could regulate H3pT11 and cell senescence through signaling pathways, revealing a new mechanism for regulating cell senescence by nutritional metabolism.
On the afternoon of April 18th, President Deng Xiuxin met with Professor Workman, and introduced the history, subject characteristics and the preparation works of the 120th anniversary of HZAU to him. Both sides expressed their intentions to cooperate further. On the morning of April 19th, before the lecture, a talk was held between Prof. Wang Xuelu and investigator Jerry Workman. Prof. Wang introduced the development of biology and biomedicine in HZAU, and their talk focused on the feasibility of cooperation in the biomedical field.
                                                                                                                                                                                                         
Source: http://news.hzau.edu.cn/2018/0421/51792.shtml

Translated by Wu Yanni
Revised&proofread by Wang Xiaoyan