It is our great honor to announce that Dr. Keji Zhao has recently agreed to join the advisory board of HMS-CSSA (Attached is the bio-sketch of Dr. Keji Zhao).

Dr. Zhao is the director of the Systems Biology Center at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Zhao joined the NHLBI in 1999 and was appointed a senior investigator in 2007.

With his support, we believe HMS-CSSA will be able to serve our community better.

We are looking forward to working with him in the future.

HMS-CSSA

Keji Zhao, PhD
Director of the Systems Biology Center at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

Keji Zhao, Ph.D., is director of the Systems Biology Center at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Zhao joined the NHLBI in 1999 and was appointed a senior investigator in 2007.

Dr. Zhao’s research focuses on the epigenetic regulation of chromatin, the combination of tightly-wound DNA and proteins that make up our chromosomes. Through various chemical modifications to DNA and chromatin proteins called histones, epigenetic mechanisms regulate which genes are turned on or off in a given cell, thus determining cell identity. Understanding how these epigenetic patterns are established during development and how improper epigenetic signals contribute to disease is the long-term goal for his lab.

Using advanced genome-wide mapping approaches developed at the NHLBI, Dr. Zhao’s group has been pioneering whole-genome analyses of human chromatin modifications. His group was the first to map the global methylation and acetylation patterns in human histone proteins, as well as the first to provide a genome-wide map of nucleosome positioning within chromatin (nucleosomes are the core repeating unit of chromatin).
His research efforts also focus on the enzymes responsible for generating the epigenetic modifications on chromatin. Recently, his group mapped the distribution of histone acetyltransferases (HATs) and deacetylases (HDACs), enzymes that regulate histone acetylation, in human T cells. By identifying these genome-wide epigenetic patterns, Dr. Zhao’s research has revealed numerous insights into the relationship between the epigenome, chromatin-modifying enzymes, and gene expression.

Dr. Zhao received his undergraduate degree from Changwei Normal College in Weifang, China in 1980 and his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Geneva, Switzerland in 1996. Prior to joining the NHLBI, Dr. Zhao was a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchel Cancer Research Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University, California.