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Genome Science & Medicine

Genome Science & Medicine

Dissect biomedical phenomena with advanced genomic technologies

We are working with systems biology and medicine to understand complex biological systems through a functional genomics approach. High throughput technology and novel algorithms are required for collecting, integrating, and visualizing the enormous amount of data on gene expression, protein expression, and protein interactions arising in the wake of the Human Genome Project. Alliance with external academics and industry will be crucial to the success of the new “systems biology”, that is, understanding biological systems as more than the sum of their parts.

Personal cancer genome

The variety of genetic and epigenetic alterations that accumulate in cancer genomes cause activation of oncogenes and inactivation of tumor suppressor genes, leading to cellular transformation. Next generation sequencing technology has enabled us to obtain individual genomic information within feasible cost and time constraints. Since 2008 my group has participated in the International Cancer Genome Consortium and is studying the genomic alterations in liver and gastric cancers.

Chromatin regulation

Epigenetic processes are essential for the packaging and interpretation of the genome, fundamental to normal development and cell differentiation, and increasingly recognized as being involved in human disease. Epigenetic mechanisms, which include histone modification, positioning of histone variants, nucleosome remodeling, DNA methylation, and non-coding RNAs, are considered as “cellular memory”. We have applied genomic technologies, such as ChIP-sequencing and chromatin interaction, to map these epigenetic marks and high-order structure throughout the genome and to elucidate how these marks are written and read.