Weiwei Dang

Baylor College of Medicine, USA

Title: Epigenetic and Chromatin Regulation of Aging in Mammalian Stem Cells

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Biography

Weiwei Dang, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics and the Huffington Center on Aging at Baylor College of Medicine. A CPRIT Scholar in Cancer Research, He earned his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, Microbiology, and Biochemistry from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. He completed his postdoctoral training under Dr. Shelley Berger at the Wistar Institute and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

He has authored more than 40 peer-reviewed publications in high-impact journals and serves on the editorial boards of eLife, Aging Cell, Journal of Gerontology, Frontiers in Aging, and Life Medicine. Additionally, he is an elected board member and the Assistant Secretary of the American Aging Association (AGE).

Abstract

Functional decline and dysregulation of stem cells contribute to tissue and organismal aging. Significant changes in transcriptome during aging, from altered gene expression to aberrant transcription, have been observed in various tissues and cell types, even at the single-cell level. These changes are linked to decline in stem cell function and loss of stem cell identity. However, the molecular mechanisms that underlie these changes remain poorly understood. In this meeting, I will discuss profound chromatin changes we discovered during mammalian aging and describe how these chromatin changes drive transcriptomic changes observed in aged stem cells and tissues.