赵伯譞教授| 邀请报告：Decoding How Cells Talk: A Sequencing-based Toolkit for Intercellular Communication

讲座信息

• 主讲嘉宾：赵伯譞 教   授 (伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳 - 香槟分校)
• 主持嘉宾：胡璐璐 研究院 (梧桐岛研究员/复旦大学)
• 汇报时间：7月23日 (星期四） 14:00
• 汇报地点：上海市浦东新区张江路88号R01栋219室

 

讲座简介

Cells in complex tissues do not act alone. They are wired into circuits and continuously exchange molecular signals, and the breakdown of this communication underlies disorders ranging from neurological disease to cancer. Yet the tools to map who connects to whom at scale with molecular resolution have lagged far behind our ability to profile cells in isolation. The Zhao laboratory develops sequencing-based technologies to close this gap by converting physical connectivity and intercellular signaling into a readable nucleic acid code.
In this talk, Dr. Zhao will first introduce Connectome-seq, a high-throughput approach that maps neural connectivity through single-nucleus and single-synaptosome sequencing, allowing brain wiring diagrams to be reconstructed at scale. Dr. Zhao will then turn to Communicatome-seq, a framework that extends this principle from connectivity to communication, profiling the dialogue between cells and resolving the molecular regulators that link cell types within a tissue. Finally, Dr. Zhao will look ahead to where this platform is going, including a next generation of Connectome-seq that reads connectivity directly at the level of RNA-RNA interactions, capturing interacting RNA pairs as chimeric cDNA for sequencing readout. In this way, RNA serves both as a tool for reading how cells connect and as a window into the molecular logic of how cells wire and communicate.

汇报人简介

Dr. Boxuan Zhao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with affiliations in the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, the Neuroscience Program, and the Cancer Center at Illinois. His laboratory develops sequencing-based technologies to map cellular connectivity and communication.
Dr. Zhao received his undergraduate training in chemistry at Peking University, completed his PhD in chemistry at the University of Chicago, where he studied DNA and RNA modifications, and carried out postdoctoral research at Stanford University. He established his independent laboratory at Illinois in 2023. He has been recognized as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher from 2022 to 2025.

报告流程

• PART 01 学术汇报
• PART 02 问答环节
• PART 03 茶歇