I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at Rockefeller University at Dr. Li Zhao’s lab . My long term goal is to study how evolution give rise to novel protein structure, protein dynamics, and protein-protein interactions (PPI). This is critical to understand how evolutionary new add-ons shape the complex cellular machinary and drive phenotypical novelty. Additionally, it provides insights into the relations between evolutionary new genes and health/diseases. To achieve this, I use a set of special genes, known as de novo genes, as these genes enable us to better track their origination and evolution compared to other genes. My work involves three directions: (1) Developing comprehensive computational pipelines that integrate comparative genomics, multi-omics, and population genomics to identify de novo genes in Drosophila melangoaster (fruit fly); (2) Applying large scale computational biophysics to study the de novo protein structures and their protein-protein interactions; and (3) Combining molecular evolution and machine learning techniques to study how evolution generates novel protein structures and PPIs, and how these innovations shape the complex cellular machinary.

Publications

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CV

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