The research goal of our lab is to elucidate fundamental mechanisms of transcriptional and epigenetic regulation and the roles of their dysregulation in disease, especially cancer.

Transcription is an elaborate, multistep process that involves a diverse network of transcriptional machinery decoding the genetic and epigenetic information stored in chromatin. As such, miscommunication between transcriptional machinery and chromatin can induce transcriptional deregulation that perturbs physiological functions and, when accumulated to a certain extent, causes disease including cancer. Whole-genome sequencing studies have identified human cancers to harbor frequent mutations of transcription factors, transcriptional signaling pathways and epigenetic regulators, highlighting the implication of transcriptional and epigenetic dysregulation in cancer. In our lab, we strive to understand what are the principles of communication between transcriptional machinery and chromatin, why the deregulation of transcriptional regulators can alter gene expression, and how to intervene and rectify this miscommunication to alleviate or even cure disease. We aim to pursue interdisciplinary studies by using different approaches in biochemistry, bioinformatics, genetics and epigenetics, functional genomics, and cancer biology, with the ultimate goal to make impactful discoveries and benefit patients and the community. The specific research directions of our lab include:

1) Molecular mechanisms of transcriptional and epigenetic regulation.

2) Development of patient sample-based high-throughput techniques in transcription and epigenetics.

3) Integrated transcriptomic and epigenomic profiling and bioinformatic analyses in patient samples to discover disease etiology and treatment strategies.

4) Integrated single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptome analyses to decipher mechanisms of cancer metastasis.

5) CRISPR screens to discover novel regulators in transcription, epigenetics, and cancer.