Time: 9:00-10:30 am, Friday, May 20, 2022

Online: ZOOM ID 874 7882 0057

Host: Jianjun Cheng, Chair Professor, School of Engineering, Westlake University

Speaker：

Prof. Bo Wang

Assistant Professor of Bioengineering

School of Engineering & Medicine

Stanford University

Biography:

Bo Wang is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011 working with Steve Granick. He transitioned to biology as a postdoctoral fellow working with Phillip Newmark during 2011-2015. His research group uses single-cell sequencing techniques and quantitative biology approaches to study a diverse group of flatworms, with the goal of understanding collective cell behaviors that control tissue regeneration, adaptation, and evolution.

Abstract:

How do various cell types coordinate functions so that animals are not just simple sum of their constituent cells? To answer this question, we use functional genomic analysis and computational models to study a variety of animals, in particular flatworms, to understand cell type evolution, regeneration of nervous systems, and genetic circuits that control collective cellular behaviors for emergent organismal functions. In this talk, I will focus on our recent work in which we found that wound signals propagate in the form of a wave with an unexpected speed to coordinate regeneration responses far away from wounds in the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea. This work suggests that cell types with particular morphological characteristics can serve as superhighways for rapid signal transduction to synchronize cellular behaviors in heterogeneous and complex tissues.

Contact:

Ms. Huaiwei Shi, School of Engineering

shihuaiwei@westlake.edu.cn