BME PhD Prospectus Presentation: Hia Ming

Title: "RNA Velocity and Gene Inducibility in Growing Cells"

Advisory Committee: Dr. Wilson Wong, PhD - BME (chair) Dr. Brian Cleary, PhD - BME (advisor) Dr. John Ngo, PhD - BME Dr. Zeba Wunderlich, PhD - BIO

Abstract: RNA velocity is a widely used method for inferring transcriptional dynamics from single-cell RNA-seq. While it is typically measured in growing cell populations, current frameworks do not account for the effects of cell growth and division on RNA kinetics. This work first demonstrates, through simulation and reanalysis of published datasets, that omitting growth rate systematically biases velocity estimates and downstream trajectory inference, and proposes experimental strategies to correct for this. Building on this corrected framework, this work further shows that growth rate acts as a global regulator of gene inducibility, using inducible reporter systems to establish that slower-growing cells mount larger transcriptional responses to the same stimulus, first in a synthetic reporter, then across diverse signaling pathways and cell types, establishing growth-dependent inducibility as a general principle of transcriptional regulation.