Carisa Zeng

Program: Computational and Systems Biology

Current advisor: Lilianna Solnica-Krezel, PhD

Undergraduate university: University of Chicago, 2023

Enrollment year: 2025

Research summary
Mechanism of Gastrulation Patterning by BMP; High-throughput profiling of temporal dynamics of gastrulation patterning by BMP using single-cell sequencing combined with imaging.

I will focus on identifying the mechanism of cell movement regulation by BMP from transcriptional and epigenetic perspective. Gastrulation cell movement and cell fate specification are two arms of gastrulation patterning, where regulation of cell fate by the morphogen BMP has been observed highly correlated with the modes of cell movement during convergence and extension. There is currently a lack of well-warranted mechanisms that crosslink cell movement pattern and cell fate regulation by BMP. My goal would be to elucidate such a mechanism or show that cell fate and cell movement regulated by BMP are not necessarily well correlated during gastrulation.

Graduate publications
Hu H, Lin PB, Zeng C, Li Y, Bosch ME, Emmerson JT, Sharma P, Ohara RA, Dong W, Wu T, Du S, Gao W, Jiang H, Yuan L, Bao X, Li S, Vomund AN, Erdmann-Gilmore P, Gu Y, Hu M, Nulman J, Miller TM, Yok. 2026 Priming of CD8+ T cells by peripheral dendritic cells exacerbates tau-mediated neurodegeneration. Nat Neurosci, ():Online ahead of print. PMCID: