Team Leader

Xiao Chen is a Professor of Laboratory of Marine Protozoan Biodiversity & Evolution, affiliated with Marine College at Shandong University. His group aims to delineate mechanisms underlying chromatin regulation and genome evolution using eukaryotic cell models.

Dr. Chen has been focusing on epigenetic regulation mechanism of cellular homeostasis maintenance using eukaryotic models including ciliate. The findings are highlighted as follows: 

1) Clarified the gene transcription pattern and omics basis for maintaining cellular homeostasis under environmental stress, laying the foundation for further exploration of its epigenetic regulation mechanism; 

2) Elucidated the molecular mechanisms by which epigenetic factors alter gene transcription levels and regulate cellular homeostasis, expanding our understanding of the involvement of epigenetic factors in regulating cellular homeostasis; 

3) Revealed the pathogenic mechanism of cellular homeostasis imbalance caused by chromatin dysregulation and confirmed the potential diagnostic and therapeutic value of epigenetic regulation of cellular homeostasis. 

These findings have led to more than 40 publications in high-impact journals including Nature Communications, PNAS, and Molecular Cell. Dr. Chen's work was highly recognized by distinguished experts in chromatin fields as "a crucial discovery that will provide key information for current and future drug development" and "an important study that further illuminates on the role oncohistones have in gene transcription regulation". 

Currently, the research on the dysregulation of gene transcription by chromatin states has been hampered by a lack of rationalized systems to dig deep into the underlying mechanism. Dr. Chen hereby aims to further explore the roles of histone modifications in regulating gene transcription and maintaining cell physiological and structural stability, in response to the key question of how eukaryotes maintain cellular homeostasis.

Profile: https://faculty.sdu.edu.cn/xc/en

Chen Lab: https://faculty.sdu.edu.cn/chenlab/en