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Research Interests The long-term
goal of research in our lab is to use mathematical and statistical methods to
identify functional elements in eucaryotic genomes, especially the genes and
their control and regulatory elements. A genome is the program book of a
life, genome research will lead to eventual decoding of the entire genetic
language of life and its grammar. Driven by the Human Genome Project, our
current interest is on two related problems: genome/chromatin organization
and gene regulation networks. At the transcriptional level, identification of
cis-elements (both genetic and epigenetic) is the key focus. We are
increasingly interested post-transcriptional regulations, especially at
splicing regulation and translational regulation. Constitutive coding exons
are relatively easy to identify, the greatest challenge lies in the
identification of end exons and alternatively spliced exons that are often
tissue- and developmental specific. Since this requires the study of many
important control and regulatory elements for gene expression, this link
between gene structure and function at the genomic or pre-/pri- RNA level
requires high-throughput functional studies. Detecting cis regulatory
elements and modeling gene expression networks are difficult challenges in
the functional genomics era. Working closely with bench-scientists, our
investigation will undoubtedly contribute to the understanding of genome
organization as well as gene expression and regulation mechanisms, which will
in turn have a profound impact on biology and medicine. |
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