Wednesday, April 5, 2023

CCMB Seminar: Lixing Yang, Ph.D.

4:00 PM

Palmer Commons, Forum Hall

"The causes and consequences of somatic genome rearrangements in human cancer"

Abstract

Genomic rearrangements, also known as structural variations (SVs), are large scale alterations that changes the DNA structure. They include deletions, duplications, insertions, and other forms that are accompanied by copy number changes as well as inversions, translocations, and other copy-neutral forms. They are an important type of variation, affecting an order of magnitude more base pairs than single nucleotide variations (SNVs) in normal human population. In cancer, several chromosomal translocations have been identified and subsequently became targets of successful treatments. However, the functional impact of genomic rearrangements and their roles in treatment response are largely unexplored. We are developing new computational methods and exploring large scale cancer omics data to infer the mutational mechanisms leading to these alterations, to identify potential disease-driving events, and to study how they affect treatments.

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Lixing Yang, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Ben May Department for Cancer Research
Department of Human Genetics, The University of Chicago

The Yang Lab is battling on the frontiers of precision medicine. We focus mostly on human cancer, and are also interested in non-cancer human diseases as well. We develop new computational methods to integrate the large scale genomic, transcriptomic, epigenetic and clinical data to understand the mechanisms of pathogenesis, to discover new drug targets, and eventually, to help patients.