Springfield, Missouri, United States
My long-term research goal is to enhance our understanding of the neuronal mechanisms underlying autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by employing computational and neurobiological approaches to identify therapeutic targets. Currently, I am investigating its etiology in sleep and circadian rhythm through innovative multi-omics-based systems biology studies.
• Investigate orphan C/D box small nucleolar RNA (snoRNA) mechanisms driving sleep disturbance in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using multi-omics approaches and discover its therapeutic targets • Revealed cell-specific rhythmic expression using single nucleus RNA-seq • Identified the connection between circadian rhythms and ASD from transcriptome and splice junction usage studies in mouse brain • Developed optimized in silico pipelines for genome-wide transcriptome and splice junction usage studies
• Discovered preferential minor allele expression and aberrant snoRNA mediated splicing from allele specific expression study in ASD patient brains • Developed optimized pipelines for allele specific expression study • Optimized Hi-C sequencing library construction for chromosome conformation analysis during human brain development • Identified RNA editing dysregulation in ASD patients • Optimized polyribosome fraction experiments for mouse brain and characterized the translational role of JAKMIP1 in ASD
• Investigated GABAB1 gene-specific and genome-wide expression changes in alcoholics
• Studied chaperone protein structure using X-ray crystallography and molecular biology