Rate My Professor Manu Manu

Manu Manu, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of North Dakota, where he leads a research lab focused on gene regulatory networks and gene regulation during hematopoietic cell-fate specification. His work explores the architecture and dynamics of these networks in stem cell differentiation, cell identity, and regeneration. The lab integrates experimental and computational approaches, including molecular biology, genomics techniques such as RNA-Seq, ATAC-Seq, Hi-C, and single-molecule footprinting, genome editing with CRISPR/Cas9, flow cytometry, microscopy, mathematical modeling, and machine learning. Current projects investigate enhancer regulation in differentiating stem cells, the interplay between cell cycle and differentiation, and non-additive control of gene expression by long-range regulatory interactions.

Manu Manu's research contributions span developmental biology and hematopoiesis. Earlier work elucidated dynamic control of positional information and canalization in Drosophila blastoderm patterning, with seminal papers such as "Dynamic control of positional information in the early Drosophila embryo" (Nature, 2004; 662 citations) and "Canalization of gene expression in the Drosophila blastoderm by gap gene cross regulation" (PLoS Biology, 2009; 279 citations). Recent publications include "The contributions of DNA accessibility and transcription factor occupancy to enhancer activity during cellular differentiation" (G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics, 2023), "LucFlow: A method to measure Luciferase reporter expression in single cells" (PLoS ONE, 2023), "Data-driven modeling predicts gene regulatory network dynamics during the differentiation of multipotential hematopoietic progenitors" (PLoS Computational Biology, 2022), and "Dynamic Modeling of Transcriptional Gene Regulatory Networks" (Methods in Molecular Biology, 2021). He is a member of the Epigenetics and Genomics working group at the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences.