Associate Professor
Jacobs School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences
Bioinformatics; Cell growth, differentiation and development; Gene Expression; Genomics and proteomics; Molecular genetics; Stem Cells; Transcription and Translation; Transgenic organisms; Vision science
We are interested in the fundamental mechanisms underlying the shift of cellular states from progenitors to fully functional mature cell types along individual cell lineages during development. We address this issue by studying cell fate specification and differentiation in the developing neural retina. Our efforts are on identifying key regulators, uncovering their roles in individual lineages, and understanding how they carry out these roles. One area of our research is focused on how transcription factors influence the epigenetic landscape along the retinal ganglion cell lineage. We have also begun to investigate how posttranscriptional control of gene expression affects retinal cell differentiation. We conduct our research using a combinatorial approach encompassing genetics, molecular biology, genomics, and bioinformatics. Most recently we are using single cell RNA-seq and single ATAC-seq technologies extensively to address the fundamental questions in retinal development.