Brain science is the frontier of scientific research, as it is essential for exploring the fundamental principles of how our brain works, and why mental disorders happen. Elucidating these challenging questions requires revolutionary approaches, for which we believe that both “wet” and “dry” biotechnologies are essential for this pursuit. We are curious about how deep learning algorithms and big data analyses could breakout boundaries and extend our understanding of the principles underlie brain diseases. To achieve this, we took neurological diseases (especially ALS) as our research model, which is one of the most challenging type of diseases to cure. We also established a computational cluster powered with multiple A100 GPUs and >300 CPU cores. In our recent work, we focused on developing cutting-edge biotechnologies to investigate how genetic mutations modulate molecular changes (such as RNA splicing/expression and DNA methylation), and what are the genetic mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases at a single cellular and spatial transcriptomic resolution.
Some of our ongoing projects include:
1. Dissect the functional roles of noncoding variants in ALS, using deep learning (such as transformer and CNN) and multi-omics strategies (such as WGS, RNA-seq and epigenome).
2. Explore the spatial-cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases, using single cell sequencing and spatial transcriptomics in human and mouse brain tissues.