Rio & Zeyneb
UCLA B.I.G
Undergraduate Summer Program 2016
Xia, Ugoma, & Ashok

Latest News

  1. Our collaborative study with Dr. Andrea Hevener, “Conserved multitissue transcriptomic adaptations to exercise training in humans and mice” was accepted by Cell Reports! Congrats to lab members Dr. Graciel Diamante , Dr. In Sook Ahn and Dr. Montgomery Blencowe for their contributions
  2. Our collaborative study with Dr. Patrick Allard’s group, “Single-nucleus resolution mapping of the adult C. elegans and its application to elucidate inter- and trans-generational response to alcohol” was accepted by Cell Reports! Our former graduate student Dr. Yen-Wei Chen who did the scRNAseq data analysis was a co-first author on this study. Congrats!!
  3. Our collaborative work with Dr. Olu Ajijola’s group, “Tiered Sympathetic Control of Cardiac Function Revealed by Viral Tracing and Single Cell Transcriptome Profiling”, has been accepted by elife. Congratulations to Dr. Russell Littman (co-first author) and Dr. Doug Arneson (co-author)
  4. Congratulations to Dr. Jason Hong for receiving the 2023 American Thoracic Society Early Career Investigator Award in Pulmonary Vascular Disease
  5. Our collaborative study of pulmonary arterial hypertension with Dr. Jason Hong and Dr. Mansoureh Eghbali  was accepted by AJRCMB! Congratulations to the teams!
  6. Congratulations to Jessica Ding for receving the 2022 IBP Hyde Fellowship! So proud of all your achievements!
  7. Our collaborative work with Dr. Tian Xia’s group on how environmental nanoparticles affect gene programs in liver cell types using 3D liver organoids and scRNAseq was accepted by Nano Today! Congratulations to the team and thank Dr. Graciel Diamante, Dr. In Sook Ahn, Darren Wijaya, Kavya Immadisetty for their contribution to the scRNAseq work!
  8. Congratulations to Dr. Doug Arneson and Dr. Guanglin Zhang and the team for the publishing “Systems spatiotemporal dynamics of traumatic brain injury at single cell resolution reveals humanin as a therapeutic target” in Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences!
  9. Congratulations to Russel Littman for receiving the 2022 Dissertation Year Fellowship!
  10. Congratulations to Dr. Yanning ZuoDr. Monty Blencowe and Dr. Yen-wei Chen for receiving their Doctoral degrees in 2022!

Integrative Multiomics and Systems Biology of Common Human Diseases


Research in our lab employs integrative multiomics and systems biology approaches to understand the molecular networks underlying common cardiometabolic disorders such as coronary artery disease, diabetes, obesity, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, brain disorders such as traumatic brain injury and Alzheimer’s disease, and the connections between cardiometabolic disorders and brain disorders.

Our research is built upon the hypothesis that the complex interactions between genetic (i.e., DNA variants) and environmental risk factors (e.g., diets, environmental pollutants) perturb specific gene networks which in turn induce variations in disease susceptibility and therapeutic response.

By developling and applying integrative multiomics and systems biology approaches that leverage genetic, transcriptomics, epigenomic, metabolomic, microbiome, and phenotypic data from human and rodent populations, we aim to identify causal molecular networks and key regulators that contribute to the development of human complex diseases and further utilize the disease networks to guide therapeutics. Details of our research are here.

Our lab has developed Mergeomics and Pharmomics tools for muti-omics data integration and drug repurposing, respectively. Details of these tools are here.

Our research is generously supported by JDRF and NIH NIDDK, NINDS, NIMH, NICHD, and NHLBI.

A disease network and key regulators. Figure credit: Jenny Cheng

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